


A Study In Scarlet

by tiger_in_the_flightdeck



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Bisexual John, Blood, Blow Jobs, Book: A Study in Scarlet, Case Fic, Complete, Crime Scenes, Cults, Dancing, Dead Body, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Graphic Description of Corpses, Gregson is a dick, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Modern Era, Modern Retelling, Murder Mystery, Needles, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV First Person, POV John Watson, Past Child Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Phlebotomy, Protective John Watson, Tattoos, The Baker Street Irregulars - Freeform, graphic description of scars, medical talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-02 00:30:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 49,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2793218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiger_in_the_flightdeck/pseuds/tiger_in_the_flightdeck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An indiscreet photograph ends up online, forcing Watson to postpone his pursuit of a medical degree. Turning to the life of a soldier, he takes a bullet through the shoulder and is sent home to London a lost and broken man. Friendless and facing homelessness, he is introduced to an eager young man in the chemical labs at Bart's Hospital.<br/>As a friendship begins to form between them, a murder investigation pulls Watson into Holmes' world. Between crime scenes, a killer with an eye on revenge, and frustrating police officers, their friendship grows into something neither of them had expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sherlock Holmes

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to keep this as Canon Compliant as I can, in terms of character traits. Which means there will be plenty of references to Holmes' suspected bipolar disorder, as well as Watson's ordeal with war.  
> As it says in the tags, this is not a BBCverse fic. It has nothing to do with Sherlock, beyond both of them being modernized.  
> In another attempt at Canon Compliance, Holmes and Watson are as close to their ages as I could figure out from the original book. Holmes has just turned 22, while Watson is 25/26. Also, in the words of Watson, they are 'so far down Queer Street, they may never find their way back again.' Watson is bisexual, while Holmes is homosexual and genderfluid.  
> Hover over words/phrases in a different language. If I've done it correctly, the translation should show up in an alt text.  
> I am also writing Holmes' and Watson's blogs, which will have stories that may not show up on AO3. For example, The Sign of Four will be done up entirely in blog posts. It is done up as a semi-interactive fanfic, where you can send them messages or questions, and see the sort of things they blog about between cases. They take place after the events of ASiS, while Watson is going back to medical school.  
> Holmes can be found here: http://bakerstreetbranch.tumblr.com/  
> While Watson is here: http://medschoolandmysteries.tumblr.com/

I was partway through university when my world crumbled around me.

I had been planning on becoming a trauma surgeon, and had already been accepted to King’s College of Medicine. My UKCAT scores were excellent, and I had impressed my interviewers. Because my family was paying for my schooling, I had taken a gap year to travel through India, then focused on doing volunteer work rather than getting gainful employment to save for myself.

That turned out to be my mistake. My father had never been the most supportive person in my life, and his loans of money came with more rules and stipulations than an average bank. And his strict conservatism didn’t mesh with my own personal habits.

When I was 21, I had been dating a political sciences student for several months. I had recklessly assumed that my father would leave me to my own devices, but he had kept a close eye on me, both in person and online. Even though I had thought I had been so careful, a candid photo had appeared on Facebook of my boyfriend Percy perched on my knee.

A damned kiss, and Father pulled all of my funding from both school and housing. It didn’t matter in the least to him when he saw the dozens of girlfriends I’ve had over the years. All he saw was his son with another young man. A shame to his family, far greater than my brother’s drinking problem, and obviously a threat to his masculinity.

Percy and I lasted only three more weeks before I found myself at the end of a short and fraying rope. I burned through my meagre savings in short order before a fellow student made a suggestion of how I could pay my tuition for school, and ensure that I had a career waiting for me when I was finished.

Six months later found me in Afghanistan getting shot at. I should have known that sooner or later one of the shots would find its mark.

I took a bullet through my left shoulder during a night patrol close to the end of my second tour. It shattered my collarbone, and grazed the subclavian artery before passing through me entirely, taking bits of bone with it. I would have died on the field if one of the combat medics, Murray, hadn’t dragged me back to relative safety. As it was, my heart still stopped for a medically significant time, and I came close to losing the arm. I don’t remember much of the next few weeks. I was under heavy sedation to deal with the pain while I was moved to a base hospital. With the damage already done to my chest cavity, my left lung collapsed in transit. Being hooked up to ventilators and chest tubes, it was almost inevitable that I would contract a nosocomial infection, which in turn led to a bout of pneumonia. The medical team had all but written me off, not expecting me to make a recovery, but I failed to meet even my doctor’s expectations. As soon as I was stable enough, I was returned home.

During my recovery I had lost nearly all of my muscle, hard won through rugby and physical training. I was close to emaciated when I landed back in London, and even if anyone had been there to meet me at the arrivals gate, they wouldn’t have recognised the man in front of them. Getting into the first cab I found, I directed the driver to take me to a hostel on the strand. When I first arrived, I had no intention on staying for more than a couple of days. That swiftly turned into weeks, and soon I was haggling with the owner for cheaper rates to stay on a month to month basis. The idea of putting money into a flat of my own unnerved me. After camp life, I couldn’t bring myself to settle anywhere permanent. My instincts told me that I needed to be able to roll out of bed and be on my way at a moment’s notice.

I returned to training, slowly building both my health and strength. But while my body was recovering, being in such close, cramped quarters with a new collection of strangers every week was grating on my nerves. Every slammed door or shout was making my temper shorter and shorter. Each of my outbursts was another lodged complaint until the owner finally gave me notice to take my things and leave.

I took my bags to a twenty-four hour gym to store them in a locker, and found myself wandering the city, feeling lost. Life in London for a man of my habits would be far beyond my means. I knew I wanted to finish my medical training, but the beginning of the school term wasn’t for another half a year. And that was only if I was able to recover the full use of my left hand before it began.

My increasingly dark thoughts were interrupted while I was spoiling myself with a pint of Tiger at the Criterion. A hand rested on my good shoulder, giving me a familiar squeeze in greeting. A soft voice murmured a hello against my ear as someone slid into the seat beside me. When I turned around, I saw Thomas Stamford looking up at me with his usual friendly expression and a bit of concern in his spicy green eyes. While we had never been close friends at school, he was the first familiar face I had seen since I returned from Afghanistan, and the few friendly nights we had spent together came fast and fresh to my mind. The expression of delight on his face did wonders for my mood, and I quickly paid my bill before dragging him from the bar.

“What in the hell have you done to yourself, John?” Stamford demanded when I winced at the impact of my shoulders hitting the coarse brick wall in the first alley we’d found.

“I forgot to duck.” I explained shortly, tugging on his belt and pulling him against me. When that didn’t seem to be the reply he was looking for, I sighed and sketched out the last year for him in as few words as possible.

“Poor devil,” he crooned against my ear, slipping his fingers down the front of my jeans. “It’s a wonder you haven’t snapped, you’re wound so tight.” Stamford squeezed and twisted his wrist, giving me a few clumsy tugs before setting into a rhythm. I stopped him from rucking my shirt up around my chest, not wanting the still red and purple scar to be seen. He made a questioning sound in the back of his throat but didn’t press the matter. Instead, he moved his lips to the right side of my neck and gave me a sharp nip.

My hips pushed up into his fist and I had to bite down hard on my lip to keep from shouting as months of pent up frustration and annoyance flowed out of me. Spots were still swimming across my eyes when Stamford took his hand away, wiping it on the brick beside my head.

“Definitely wound up tight as a spring.” he laughed, shaking his head. He propped me up on the wall and tucked me back into my jeans after cleaning me off with the inner cuff of his sleeve.

Rather than snapping at his flippant tone the way I would have done a month sooner, or even that morning for that matter, I put my hand to his cheek and pushed him lightly to finish dressing myself. He laughed as he moved out of the way, watching my movements closely. “Is that a doctor’s opinion?” I asked with a snort.

“Well, a doctor-in-training’s, at least. Still a student, me.” he shrugged carelessly. “I’m seeing how long I can milk this Uni thing before I’m expected to do something meaningful with my life.” Turning serious for a moment, Stamford brushed his fingers back through my hair, reminding me that I needed to get a trim. Perhaps a shave. “What about you, John? What have you been doing since you came home?”

I closed my eyes and pressed my head into his hand for a moment before straightening. When I was sure I could walk without needing to be held up, I took Stamford’s hand in my own and led him back out of the alley before we got caught. The sweet lad didn’t even complain about the state I had left him in without any sort of assistance, he simply adjusted his jeans with a sort of hop skip, and fell into step beside me.

It was some hours later, stretched out on my back in his bed after I had returned the favour, that I answered his questions. I was trailing my fingers through his messy hair, just allowing myself to enjoy the closeness of another person. “I need to find myself a flat of my own.” I explained, stretching my arms over my head. “It’s just hard with my finances the way they are. It shouldn’t be so damned hard to find a comfortable place to live, without draining my bank account.”

Stamford propped himself up on his elbow above me, his hair sticking out in every direction. “Huh,” he frowned, head tilted to the side. “Strange. You’re the second man that’s said almost that exact thing to me today.”

“Who was the first?” I asked, sitting up against the headboard.

“I was logging some hours in the lab at the hospital this morning. There was a bloke there whinging - ahem - complaining about the same thing.” Stamford rolled out of bed to take a sip of one of the half empty pint glasses that sat on his side table. He padded naked across the room to refill the glass. “He found a nice little place, but he can’t find anyone to go halves with him to pay for it.”

“Christ, are you serious?” I sat up the rest of the way and stared after Stamford. “If he really wants someone to share the rooms, I’m all for it. I can afford it if we split, I just haven’t been able to find a place.” I didn’t mention that strictly speaking, I hadn’t actually been looking. “I - ah - Living with a stream of strangers is one thing, but I would really prefer not to live alone.”

Stamford looked at me over the rim of his glass before taking a long swallow of beer. “You’ve not met Sherlock Holmes yet.” he said softly. “You might not like him as someone to live with.”

“Why? What’s wrong with him?” Dozens of problems flashed through my mind as I tried to think what could be against this Holmes fellow.

“No, no. There’s nothing wrong, really. He’s just a weird sort of person. He’s out there. But he’s pretty decent from what I’ve seen. Just… strange.”

“I remember what medical students can be like.” I reminded him.

“He’s not a med student. I don’t even know what he’s there for. Every time I see him in the lab, he’s doing something different. Chemistry one day, biology the next. He probably drives his professors mad, if he ever even goes to lectures, or hands in assignments.”

I took the glass and had a sip before searching on the floor for my pants. “Don’t you ever ask him?”

“He’s not exactly a people person.” Stamford explained. Following my lead, he began to get dressed as well. “I mean, if he likes a person, he’ll talk their bloody ear off, but for the most part he’s pretty quiet.”

“I just spent the last couple years getting woken up with gunfire or explosions, rather than an alarm clock. I’ve had enough of noise to last me the rest of my life. I could do with some quiet. There’s no harm in at least meeting him. Would he still be at the labs?”

Stamford picked up his mobile and checked the time before nodding. “Yeah, of course. When he gets going, he can be there all night.” He pulled on his jeans and slipped a band over his head to hold back his tangled hair. “I take it we’re heading there now?”

“Unless you want me sleeping on the end of your bed like a stray puppy.” I countered, finding my shirt.

“Fine, you make a compelling argument, John.” He gathered up his keys and waited for me at the door.

We took the tube to Barbican, chatting quietly to each other about school and what I had missed in London during my time away. When we were walking towards the hospital, Stamford cleared his throat. “Don’t get mad at me if you don’t take a shine to him. I don’t actually know him more than the occasional cup of coffee while we’re both working in the lab.”

I shrugged with one shoulder and tucked my hands in my pockets against the night chill. “If we don’t get on, one of us can just move. It’s not that hard of a thing to do.” I gave him a sharp look. “Are you trying to warn me off? Is there something wrong with him? A bad temper, or something like that?”

“No, nothing like that. Like I said, I barely know him. He’s just a bit too… off. For my tastes, I mean. Everyone knows I never got on with the science geeks at school. He’s cold. You know that turn of mind I'm talking about. Anything takes back burner in the pursuit of knowledge. I wouldn’t put it past him to slip poison into someone’s food, just to test out how they react.” Stamford waved his hands in the air quickly. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. He’d probably do it to himself, if it didn’t mean that he couldn’t document the results. But still, cold. It scares the hell out of me, when I walk into the place, and he’s taking a field hockey stick to the back of a corpse so he can test bruise patterns.” With a shudder that told me he wasn’t exaggerating, Stamford led me through the familiar halls to reach the chemical labs.

“You sure he isn’t a medical student?” I asked again.

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Stamford jerked his chin to the end of a bank of counters. Bunsen burners were lit in a semicircle, bubbling away in front of the only student in the place.

He was tall, a few inches taller than me at nearly six foot two, and lean. When he heard our footsteps approaching, his head shot up from his work and he turned on us with an excited grin. He pushed his safety goggles up into his black hair, making it fan out around his face before he wiped his hand off on a worn and faded graphic shirt. As he rushed over, I saw that it was silk screened with a caricature of Poe and his raven, and covered in small fingerprint stains in bleach or acid. “Thomas! I figured it out! Look!” The young man clambered back onto his stool and adjusted the heat on his burner, setting the contents to boiling. He took a surgical pin and pricked the tip of his finger, letting a droplet of blood fall into the beaker.

“Yes, that’s… Impressive.” Stamford finished lamely, clearly not seeing anything important in the sudden change of colour in the solution.

The student stuck his finger into his mouth, grinning around it. “It is, don’t you see?” He held up his watch, showing as two, then three, then close to ten minutes passed before the glow faded. Even after it dulled, it didn’t entirely extinguish. It took me a few seconds before it dawned on me why he was so excited.

“Luminol only lasts about thirty seconds.” I told Stamford, who still nodded awkwardly. “So if the investigators don’t take all the photos they need right off, they need to spray more, and risk diluting or even altering the sample.” I turned to the student who was looking at me with pride. “But this solution lasts for ages.” Leaning over the beaker, I peered into the contents where flecks were still glowing like bright points of light in the bottom. “Incredible.”

Looking past me to Stamford, the student raised his thin eyebrows.

“Ah, sorry. Sherlock Holmes, this is John Watson.” he said in introduction.

A surprisingly strong hand gripped mine, giving it a firm shake. I looked down at it, seeing that it was both slim and delicate, and covered with scars and stains and little sticking plasters. “Hello, how are you?”

He was such a slight creature, I had expected a brief squeeze from his fingers, but the strength there was interesting. “Hopefully I’ll be better soon, Holmes.” I cleared my throat and took my hand back to rub the side of my head before clasping them both at the small of my back. “Sorry, Sherlock.”

With a flick of his wrist, he batted away the correction, but his cheeks flushed up a charming shade of pink. “No, it’s fine. Holmes.” He gave a firm nod then flashed a smile at me. “You’re clearly used to it. _Watson_.” Clucking his tongue he glanced past me to Stamford. "Only Watson? No Doctor?"

"Ah, no. Not yet. Circumstances changed for me a while back. I'll be returning to school as soon as I can get in, though. Just a few years behind schedule, and I'll be Dr. Watson. Touch wood." Maybe it was the sex earlier, or maybe it was the fact that I was finally making steps to move forward in life. Regardless, I was feeling a bit cheeky, so I winked and as expected, Holmes turned a darker shade.  

His gaze darted over my face and chest quickly before returning to my eyes. “You’ve done a tour in Afghanistan.” he stated firmly, as if trying to get back to familiar ground.

“I… Two, actually. How did you know that?”

Again, his hand fluttered around in the air like an excited bird before he turned back to the beaker that was still glowing eerily away. “Not important right now. This is more important. Look at it. Just _look_ , Watson. Isn’t it glorious?”

If he had carried and borne a child, I don’t think he could have looked more pleased or proud of himself.

“It certainly is pretty spectacular.” _Spectacular_? I couldn’t remember using a word like that before. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had been so open with praise. “What do you plan on doing with it?”

“Why, patenting it, of course. It will ensure that crime scene photography is consistently more accurate and harder to tamper with. Five years from now, every police service or forensic analyst worth their salt will be using…” He pursed his lips as he stared at the beaker. “The Sherlight Solution.”

A pair of the most expressive grey eyes I have ever seen glittered with excitement and Holmes put his hand over his heart, bowing low from the waist as he mimed sweeping a hat from his head.

His enthusiasm was infectious, and it seemed a shame that his audience only be in his head, so I clapped my hands in polite applause.

Holmes prattled off a list of cases that could have been brought to a swifter conclusion if his solution had been around before now.

“You seem like a walking criminal report.” I chuckled. With each new point, he had tapped one of his long fingers into the palm of his other hands. I saw that he was still bleeding so I caught his wrist in my hand to hold it still. The puncture had gone in deeper than I had originally thought. Covering it with a plaster I got from the supply drawer at Holmes’ station, I rolled a finger cot down to his knuckle to keep it clean and dry. He looked at me with surprise at the attention.

“Thank you. I play with too many poisons and chemicals for me to go with broken skin.” Smiling, he turned his hand over in mine so I could get a better look at the discolouration from old scars and chemical burns. There were hard ridges of calluses over his palms and at the tip of each of his fingers.

Behind me, Stamford cleared his throat into his fist and pushed a stool in my direction. “We came here for a reason, remember?” Sitting between us - which made me feel like I was being chastised by a chaperone - Stamford nodded to Holmes. “I ran into John today at lunch. He’s in the same boat as you. Needs a new flat, but can’t cover the rent for one on his own.”

Those eyes lit up again, and Sherlock Holmes looked at me with delight. “I have my eye on a fully furnished place on Baker Street. I think it would suit us perfectly. You don’t mind living with a smoker, do you?”

“I smoke Player’s. Or, I do when I think to buy a pack.” I replied, making myself comfortable for the haggling process.

“I don’t keep my chemicals and experiments strictly to the lab. Sometimes they’ll get about the place. Is that all right?”

“Yes, of course. As long as the flat doesn’t catch fire.”

Holmes tapped his fingers on his chin as he thought out loud. “What else is wrong with me?” he mused. “I get… down. A lot. There will be days that I don’t get out of bed at all, and sometimes I don’t talk for up to a week. Don’t take it personally if I don’t answer you. I just…” he moved his fingers near his temple as if trying to make the words come. “Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down. Don’t try to fix it when that happens. Just leave me alone, and let me come out of it on my own. I always do.” Reaching out, Holmes swatted my knee. “What about you? Come on, now. Two men living together need to know the worst of each other.”

I laughed at his scrutinizing gaze. “I suppose I don’t need to worry about you reporting me to the police. I keep a small firearm with me. Old habits.” I said. “I’m still shaken from Afghanistan, so I won’t tolerate rows. I’m a lazy little shit, but sometimes I get nightmares that knock me out of bed at all sorts of ungodly hours. I -” Shifting in my seat, I coughed into my fist before scratching my fingers back through my hair. “I’ve got a few other vices to my name, but while I’m recovering I can’t indulge in them much, so you don’t need to worry.”

Looking up at me with a bit of anxiety showing in his eyes, he chewed on the corner of his lip. “Do you count violin playing in your category of rows? I’ve played since I was a child, and it helps me to think or settle my mind.”

“That depends on the person playing. A well played violin is a treat. A badly played one, though…”

He waved his hand to banish the rest of the sentence. “Oh, that’s all right then.” he laughed. “I think it’s settled, as long as you can cover your half of the rent, and the terms we get from the landlady work for us both. Provided you like the flat, that is.”

“When can we go and see the place?”

Holmes took out a scrap of paper and scribbled out an address before slipping it into my hand. “This is the address to my flat now. We’ll meet tomorrow at noon and go to Baker Street together from there and get everything settled.”

I looked down at the address to a walk up in the museum district. “I’ll be there, noon sharp.”

“Twelve hundred hours.” he chuckled, settling back down behind his beakers and burners.

Stamford and I left the hospital and made our way back to the gym so I could get my things. I called to book myself into a cheap hotel for the night, rather than impose on Stamford any longer.

“By the way,” I leaned on the counter at the hotel as I waited for the receptionist to check me in. “How the hell did he know I had been in Afghanistan?” I asked.

“That’s one of the ways I meant when I said he was weird. Just this skill he has. No one knows how he does it.” Stamford replied with a mysterious little smile. “Maybe you’ll be the one to figure it out.”

“Oh, a puzzle is he? Interesting.” I took my key and tucked it into my back pocket before shouldering my duffel. “Listen, thanks for introducing us. Er, ‘proper study of man’ and all that, I mean.”

Shaking his head, Stamford began to stroll away, his hand lifted to say goodbye. “Study hard, mate,” he called over his shoulder to leave me alone with thoughts of my potential flatmate.


	2. The Science of Deduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watson tries to figure out his new flatmate, while trying to keep himself within the bounds of Not A Creepy Stalker. His attempts are met with varied success. After making a right ass of himself, he finally finds out what the young man does to earn money. A hint- he is not, in fact, a rentboy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting to know you. Getting to know all about you...
> 
> This chapter is one of my favourite bits in the original story. It's literally just several pages of Watson trying to figure out Holmes. I have these mental images of Watson wearing a tilley hat, following Holmes around the flat and hiding behind potted ferns while making notes in his diary. "2:14 pm. The subject appears to be sniffing a peach to determine its ripeness. 2:27 pm. The subject has squished the insides of the peach and pierced the skin with a straw to drink the pulp. Fascinating..."

We met the next day at a little walk up bedsit near the museum. If the tacked up notice on the door was anything to go by, Holmes was in even more dire straits than I had been. He shyly dismissed my concern, but didn't argue too forcefully when I offered to buy us both lunch on our way to Baker Street.

The flat itself was perfectly situated. It was made up of two comfortable bedrooms, one upstairs and one off the main room. The living room was large, and furnished with old but comfortable sofas and chairs. Two large windows let in the light, and one of them had a small padded seat. It seemed that the building had been a boarding house a century or more earlier, so it didn't have a kitchen.

"It's normally students staying here." Mrs. Hudson, the middle aged landlady and housekeeper explained to us as she showed us each of the bedrooms and the bathroom. "Meals are included in the cost of the place, but each room has a personal refrigerator for cold foods and the cupboards in the living room can be used for dry goods. If you like, I also have hot plates that you can use. No one ever goes for them." She hugged her cardigan more securely around herself and stepped back out into the living room to give us some privacy.

After sharing a few hushed words in the bathroom behind the closed door, Holmes and I agreed that the terms were ideal for us both. We signed the lease that afternoon and put down our deposits.

That evening, I moved my things from the hotel into the upstairs bedroom. Then next morning I helped Sherlock Holmes collect his things from his room on Montague. The next few days were spent in getting the living room arranged to suit us both. Holmes set up a desk near the window, promptly marking his territory with chemical equipment and textbooks. I was content to set up a little writing table in the corner and we mutually agreed to use the cupboards to store books.

Holmes was easy to live with. Other than his violin he was quiet, and he generally kept to a regular schedule. It was rare for him to stay out in the living room much later than ten at night, and by the time I finally shuffled down the stairs in the mornings, he would have already eaten his breakfast and headed out for the day. It was his days that never followed a set routine. Some days he would spend his time at the chemical labs, others he would sit in on lectures, others would find him just wandering around the city. More than once, he came home out of breath with bruised knuckles and cheeks, grinning about his scuffles in some of the sketchier areas of the city.

When he was happy, I have never met a more excited, enthusiastic man. He giggled and bounced and danced about with energy as he spoke at length about any number of subjects that came to mind. But for every stretch of happiness he experienced, he would occasionally fall into a dark mood. Holmes would curl up on the sofa for days on end, not speaking, barely moving. He would stare at a blank spot on the wall or the floor, picking at the skin on his arms and wrists. His eyes were so vacant and lost that I worried he was self medicating his condition.

The first of these fits had scared the hell out of me, and I forgot his instructions to leave him be during them. For hours I spent my time sitting on the floor beside the sofa, holding his hand and rubbing his back. I tried to ply him with cups of hot chocolate or biscuits, and told him stories. After that first time, I knew better than to try to fix the problem. I would sit quietly with him so he wasn't alone, then feed him when he came back round.

As the weeks went by, my interest in him deepened and grew into something less superficial than when we first met. His appearance alone was something that would hold the attention of even the most casual observer. As I've said before, he was quite tall, and his long slim limbs made him seem even taller. His pale grey eyes were sharp, and seemed to pierce straight through a person. He had strong but well-made features, with a square chin and smooth jaw. I was almost certain that the curved shape of his eyebrows were made with the assistance of a pair of tweezers and he had the still pink scars of both an eyebrow and labret piercing. His cheeks had a few pockmarks, and the point of his left upper canine had been chipped off. These imperfections, however, only served to make his face more striking.

Holmes' hands were almost always mottled with splashes of chemicals and ink, and marked all over with pricks and scratches. Despite his calluses, they were extraordinarily delicate. It was occasionally distracting, watching the way those long, almost dainty fingers manipulated his science equipment. More than one afternoon had been lost to daydreams brought on by seeing him gripping and twisting the knobs on his microscope, until he would eventually clear his throat with a knowing smirk.

I'm sure you are reading this and thinking I am a hopeless busybody at best, or a creepy pervert at worst. But he fascinated me endlessly and each tantalizing glimpse he gave me of his personal life left me hoping for more. I have always developed attractions at the slightest provocation, and in my loneliness, I found myself inexplicably attached to him. My life seemed so meaningless to me at this point that I grabbed onto any little thing to focus on.

I learned soon enough that he wasn't a medical student. He knew some of my old professors, but he wasn't formally a student of them. His textbooks were esoteric and certainly not the required reading for any science degree. I couldn't imagine what he might be studying that would use titles like _Fourteenth Century Woodcarvers And Their Trade_ , _Hauntings Of North London_ , or _Fun and Fascinating Facts From Finland to France_. Whatever it was he was planning with his education, Holmes soaked up knowledge like a sponge when he chose.

As brilliant as his mind was, he was one of the most ignorant men I have ever met in some regards. Philosophy, politics, or any sort of contemporary literature were all blank spots for him. At one point, after watching a programme, I quoted Russell Howard. With wide eyes and an innocent expression, Holmes asked me who he was and what he had done. When one evening I was admiring the view of the moon from our window, I learned that he was completely clueless about the composition of the solar system and why the moon has a different shape each night. After fifteen minutes of trying to explain- an endeavour which involved a demonstration with two oranges and a peach- I needed to take one of my pills and have a lie down.

"You're surprised." he chuckled to me later after bringing me a cup of tea. "Thank you very much for your explanation. Now I'll try to forget it."

"Forget it!"

Holmes clambered up onto my bed and leaned back against the footboard, sipping his own cup of tea. "It's like this..." He sketched a shape in the air with his hands. "You had a toy chest when you were a boy, right?"

"Of course I did."

"Perfect, that will make this easier. Imagine that toy chest is your brain. When you have a turn of mind like mine, you need to carefully pick and choose which toys will go into the chest. Because eventually, the skipping rope will get tangled up with the hobby horse, which will get stuck in the fire engine, which will get caught on the teddy bear. It will take time to sort through everything to get the toy you want. When you arrange the toys in order, and only put in ones that you know you'll want to play with eventually, everything is much more tidy and easy to get to."

"But it's the damned Solar System!"

"So what?" he interrupted with a peevish glare. "You told me that the Earth goes round the Sun. One rotation a year, and one spin a day. That knowledge will get me nowhere in life, and makes no difference to me or my work."

I opened my mouth to ask him what exactly that work was, but his sharp expression stayed my hand. I didn't want to risk another drop for him and he looked mulish enough to snap at me if I pressed on an unwelcome topic. Leaving him alone for a couple of days, I thought over the brief conversation. While I know that I am not an intelligent man, it wasn't much of an effort for me to work some things out. If he only kept certain pieces of knowledge to help with his work, it stood to reason that the subjects he studied would point to his career path. I took what I knew of him and his studies, and even listed them out.

SHERLOCK HOLMES - his limitations, skills, and ~~pretentious~~ eccentric knowledge.

  1. Knowledge of Literature- Nil

  2. Knowledge of Philosophy- None

  3. Knowledge of Astronomy- Laughably nonexistent

  4. Knowledge of Politics- Feeble

  5. Knowledge of Botany- Varies. Alarmingly well versed on poisons and toxins. Knows nothing of practical gardening ~~, but has no trouble growing mould and mildew in the bathroom~~.

  6. Knowledge of Geology- Limited. Can tell soil samples apart at a glance. ~~Breathed heavily~~ Got excited when I brushed Afghan dirt off a pair of boots.

  7. Knowledge of Chemistry- Profound

  8. Knowledge of Anatomy- Accurate, but incomplete. Knows the names and locations of all the major organ systems, but doesn't know many of their roles.

  9. Knowledge of Trash Literature- Immense. Reads every sort of cheap paperback about human vice. Receives email notifications from dozens of different blogs, and has online subscriptions to newspapers from around the globe.

  10. Plays the violin well.

  11. Is expertly trained in several forms of martial arts, a skilled boxer, and a fair hand with a sword.

  12. Has a good working knowledge of British law.




 

By the time I reached this point in my list, and knew that I might never finish it, I gave up in disgust. I shoved my notebook into my sock drawer to forget about it for now.

In my list, I said that he plays the violin well. He was actually quite remarkable in his skill, but just as disorganised with it as he was with the rest of his knowledge. I knew that he could play complex pieces, because after listening to some of his own compositions I brought myself to ask if he could play some covers of my favourites. All it took was a time or two to listen to the original before he would pick up his violin- a beautiful piece of craftsmanship in matte black, shaped like a stylized S- and he would cover it.

It seemed that the violin really was a tool to help him think, though. Most nights, rather than playing a composed piece, he would simply sprawl over his chair and scrape the bow across the strings to bring out a tuneless wail. It was plain to see that the instrument was an extension of whatever emotions were churning just below the surface in his mind, because sometimes the mad scraping would turn melancholy and dark. The bow would drag out deep resonating notes that made me think of low sobs. Other days his fingers and the bow would dart about in spritely, cheerful songs. Those days, Holmes would sit with his eyes closed, a contented little smile over his lips.

Holmes always managed to stop just before my patience reached the end of its tether, and would sheepishly run through a series of my favourite pieces as a wordless apology for these unexpected concerts.

For the first week or so of living together, I had begun to think that Holmes had just as few friends as myself, since he had no visitors. I felt a pang of jealousy when I soon saw a stream of people that came through the flat. The first, and most common, was a middle aged man eventually introduced to me as Mr. Lestrade. He was a sallow-skinned, rat-faced man with darting eyes and a brusque way of speaking with me, and came several times a week. Other than Lestrade, most of Holmes’ guests were from a variety of classes, from City Boy bankers to nervous seeming tradesmen to lonely looking housewives.

Each time one of these guests arrived, Holmes would take me aside and apologise for the inconvenience before asking for privacy. “They’re my clients, and they need discretion,” he would explain anxiously.

I could have asked him point blank what sort of clients needed me out of the flat, but I didn’t want to force him to confide in me before he was ready. Holmes always gave me a scheduled time to return to the flat, usually two hours. He clearly had a good reason for not explaining what his work was, but I was beginning to suspect both where his income came from, and the reason for his eviction from the bedsit on Montague.

On March 4th, though, Holmes brought the subject up on his own. I remember the date, because I still have the article on hand that had started the whole conversation.

After a restless night full of terrible dreams, I rose much earlier than usual and hobbled downstairs to find Holmes still sitting down to breakfast. Mrs. Hudson was used to my late hours, so there was no place set out for me. Between the lack of sleep, and the images of battle still lingering behind my eyes, I was petulant and more than a little short when I called downstairs for my meal. I was spoiling for a confrontation to burn off the tension I had building, that sort of frustration that could only be soothed with either a good fight or a good tumble in bed. Since Holmes seemed too sleepy to provide me with either- even if I could bring myself to make the suggestion that we could take a different step in our living arrangement- I snatched up a magazine that was sitting on the table between us. While my companion munched at a piece of toast, occasionally licking honey off his fingers, I scanned through the article the magazine had been folded open to.

The pretentious writer had gone so far as to actually title the article The Book of Life, and went into great, pompous detail about how an observant individual could learn everything they need to know about someone at a glance. The entire thing was absurd from beginning to end, with the writer going on to say that he could use the slightest twitch of muscle or shift of an eye to tell what someone was thinking. He claimed that if delivered in the right manner, he would seem like a wizard to his audience.

“Listen to this BS, Holmes.” I snickered, taking a deep drink of my coffee. His grey eyes lit on me and he gave me an indulgent smile before telling me to go on. Putting as much drama into my recitation as I could, I read the end of the article for him. “The Science of Deduction is just like any other sort of art. Like the painter, or the actor, or the musician, the reasoner can only reach the height of his skill through as much practice as possible. How else can he tell a computer technician by his shirt cuffs, or a politician by the state of his hairline? It may seem childish, but the only way to perfect this skill is through practice on your companions.

“Take my own practices for an example. When a man is presented to me with a skin tone far darker than his eyes or hair colour could explain, I’m not able to tell much about him. But take it steps further, and each new discovery tells me everything I need to know. He has no scent on his skin of toner, and obvious signs around his mouth and eyes of squinting into the sun. So, a natural tan. Perhaps he has been to a tropic region. Now, if his wrists are fair, that would immediately rule out a holiday. No one in their right mind would go tanning on a beach in long sleeves. We see that our man has been in the sun for work. There are plenty of outdoor careers, but now we are looking for one that would explain the shorn locks, the haunted expression, and the obvious signs of pain when our man moves. Take everything that you know, and there is only one logical conclusion. ‘You’ve done a tour in Afghanistan.’”

I slowly finished off the passage with a glare before tossing the magazine down onto the table. “You wrote it?” I snapped.

Holmes looked enormously pleased with himself, squirming in his chair as he sucked honey off of each of his fingers. “That I did. Last week. Before you start calling me a…” he narrowed his eyes at me for a moment before grinning. “A pretentious little shit, bear in mind that it was edited and titled by someone else. Since the magazine was published, I’ve gotten twice as many clients as I normally do.”

I rocked back in my chair to glare at him more loudly. I added some pursed lips and even huffed a bit for good measure. “This is where your clients come from? This… rubbish?”

“It’s not rubbish, Watson. It’s my job. You read the article yourself. You know it’s real, what I can do. You’ve seen it in action.”

It would have been easier if Holmes sounded smug, or condescending, but he spoke to me politely. Like he was happy to share the information with me. “How do you make a job out of it?” I asked with a bit of a sulk in my tone.

“Well,” Holmes picked at the crust of his toast, pushing it around his plate until I told him to carry on. “I am a detective. I suppose you could say a consulting detective. I invented the job, so if you think about it, I’m the only one in the world.” He looked up at me, and it was clear that he was waiting for a snort of laughter. When none came, he continued with his explanation. “London has countless detectives that work for the police department, and probably even more private detectives. When one of those individuals isn’t able to pick apart a problem on their own, they consult me.” Holmes straightened in his seat, his voice taking on a bit more confidence as he spoke. He pushed his plate out of the way and poked at the table to make his points. “They show me all of the evidence they have in relation to a crime, and I use my skills to set them on the right path. See, most crimes are all in the same family, and when you’ve got hundreds, thousands of past cases in your head or at your fingertips in an index, you can compare them. Usually, it’s a matter of finding the differences that manage to solve the case.”

“So who are these clients that have been coming in?”

“Lestrade is a detective with the Yard. He’s been coming to me because he hit a snag with a forgery case. After he came to me, I set him straight. It only took a few visits, because he didn’t have all of the facts with him. By the time I saw the entire case laid out before me, it was a simple thing to point him to the culprit.” Once again, it would have been so easy to be annoyed at how sure of himself he was, but Holmes refilled my coffee mug after he finished and pushed the rest of his toast across to me. After a moment, his eyes lit up and he snickered silently into the back of his hand. “Oh good lord. You really thought I was on the game, didn’t you?”

I shifted in my chair and tried to look incredibly interested in the mug in front of me. “The rest of them?” I asked, rather than trying to explain the reasons behind my suspicions, then took a swallow of the coffee before adding a bit of sugar and cream. “Because you can’t let me believe that all those people streaming through the flat have been police officers.”

Holmes flicked his wrist and shook his head. “No, of course not. Most of them are private citizens, come to me from word of mouth. My name has shown up in a couple of newspaper articles, and now this magazine has published this.” Holmes tapped one long finger on the magazine article I had torn to shreds. “I suspect I’ll be getting even more from here on out. They come to me for advice, or counselling, or to untangle their problems. Like the police, they give me the information that they have, and I listen, then give my answers. Then, most of the time, I get paid.”

I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. I’d like to believe it was my bad mood, not my ignorance that set me off. “You’re trying to tell me that you can sit there on your arse, and tell people what the answer is, even though they’ve gone out and seen the facts with their eyes?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.” Holmes’ grey eyes glittered under his arched brows, and one corner of his mouth curved up in a smirk. “Maybe it’s intuition, but I have a skill that I’ve never seen in anyone else before. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I get a case where I need to ‘get off my arse’ and go look at the evidence firsthand. I apply all the specialised knowledge I’ve picked up over the years. You may ridicule it-” He tapped his nail on the article again. “But I could see within moments of clapping an eye on you that you’d done a tour in Afghanistan.”

“Two,” I corrected with a huff. “Someone must’ve told you.”

“Who? I didn’t know you were coming. It was obvious that you had kept Thomas’ hands and mouth busy before you showed up at the lab.”

It was my turn to shift in my seat, and had the good grace to flush at the look Holmes leveled at me with that observation. “It’s a point of pride, to make sure someone looks well fucked by the time I’m through with them.” I mumbled.

“Ah,” Holmes nicked a sip of my coffee and licked a drop of it off the centre of his bottom lip where he was wearing his ring today. “I’ll have to take your word for that for now.”

For now? I choked on my mouthful after snatching my mug back, earning a quiet little laugh from Holmes. That was certainly encouraging.

“No, I didn’t hear of you before you stepped through those doors. Between the obvious injury to your shoulder, your tan, and most telling of all, the way you stood at parade rest after we were introduced, where else could an Englishman have been to cover all of those? Afghanistan. All of it took the space of time it took me to cross the lab to shake your hand, so it’s no wonder that you were astonished when I commented on it.”

“When you actually get down to it and explain the process, it actually sounds pretty simple.” I said with a smile. “You know, you remind me a bit of Poirot. I thought this sort of thing was just in cheap paperbacks, or on crime shows on the telly.”

Holmes shook a slim cigarette out of a pack of Gitanes, and put it to his lips. He arched an eyebrow as I lit it for him, then blew a ring of blue smoke at the ceiling. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” he drawled. He stood from the table and paced the living room, occasionally punctuating his points by stabbing the cigarette in my direction. “He doesn’t give a rat’s about clues, and information. He relies on the psychological profile of the victim or the perpetrator.” Holmes muttered, flicking ash on the carpet. “Besides, he’s a seedy little creep. A right bastard.”

I folded my arms over my chest and drummed my fingers on my biceps. “Fine, what about Tony Hill? Would it be a compliment to be compared to him?”

He snorted and sucked his lip ring into his mouth, shaking his head. “If you can’t read the motives and methods of a criminal without…” Holmes pitched his voice low and ominous. “Touching the darkness inside…” His normal light, lilting tone returned and he shook his head again before taking a deep drag off his cigarette. “You’re not a detective. You’re a sideshow attraction.”

I’ve always been a bit of a fan of crime dramas and whodunit novels, and having some of my favourite characters trashed like this was putting me on edge. Holmes seemed so utterly offended, you would have thought I had the gall to compare him to Scooby Doo. I got up from the table and stole one of Holmes’ cigarettes and went to sit at the window. Despite the late winter chill, I open the window so I could blow my smoke outside, rather than fill the room with even more. He might be brilliant, but Holmes was definitely an egotistical little shit.

He had seemed to have worked himself into a small frenzy, and began gesturing wildly with the burning end of his cigarette. “There’s no criminals anymore. None of note, I mean. Ones worth my effort.” Leaning close to me, Holmes tapped his temple, coming close to singing a lock of hair. “What’s the point of brains in our profession, Watson? Look at me. I’ve got it in me to be famous with what I do. But no, I’m stuck patenting solutions for other people to use!” He stubbed out the end of his cigarette when the filter started to smoulder. He sucked and chewed at the piercing hard enough that I could hear it clicking on his teeth. “No one can do what I do. No one’s put in the same amount of time and effort into learning how to do this, and what do I have to show for it? Nothing. Not a damn thing.” Holmes pointed his finger out the window at the people strolling along the street below. “All of the crimes being committed out there are so commonplace, any person should be able to solve it, down to the stupidest Yarder.”

Holmes’ pompous rant had gone on long enough, and I felt it was time to change the subject. I peered down to the foot traffic, spotting a plainly dressed, but handsome man just about my age walking slowly on the other side of the street. He carried a large manila envelope tucked under his arm and he was looking at each of the numbers on our side of the street. “What do you think this bloke’s up to?” I asked casually.

Leaning over my shoulder, Holmes glanced out the window. “Who, the sergeant of Marines?” he asked with a sniff.

I pursed my lips together angrily. This puffed up little brat knew I had no way of confirming his guess, so I couldn’t properly argue with him over the matter.

Before I could open my mouth to at least attempt it, though, the man looked up at us both in the window and promptly dashed across the street. Less than a minute later, our landlady had answered the door, and a deep voice could be heard from downstairs. Heavy footfalls ascended the steps, and the man knocked at the door.

“Which one is Sherlock Holmes?” he asked, looking between us both.

While Holmes was taking the envelope and signing for it, I figured that this was as good a chance as any to take him down a few pegs. “Hey,” I sidled up to the man and offered him a cigarette which he politely declined. “Do you mind if I ask what you do? You don’t look like a messenger boy.”

“I’m a commissionaire, sir.” His reply was gruff, and I immediately backed off my flirtatious tactic, switching instead to looking him over curiously. He was wearing jeans and a plain button up. “My uniform got a tear in it this afternoon, sir.” he explained at my expression.

I nodded and looked at Holmes with a slightly malicious smirk. “Of course. And what were you before?”

“Sergeant, sir. I was with the Royal Marines until last year.” Looking past me to Holmes, the man asked if he needed to bring a reply back with him. “Thank you, Sir.”

He snapped off a salute to me and turned on his heel before trotting down the stairs again.

“Fuck.”


	3. The Lauriston Gardens Mystery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Holmes takes Watson to investigate a murder, shows off more than a bit, and Watson gets a little turned on.  
> Okay, maybe a bit more than a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the 'description of corpses' tag comes in. I personally don't find it graphic, but if you are sensitive to that sort of writing, tread with caution.

I have to say, despite my outburst, that I was obviously impressed by this demonstration of Holmes’ skill. I was torn between growing respect for these powers of analysis, and a lingering suspicion that the entire thing had been set up so he could dazzle me. It seemed too neat and tidy for me to think of anything but Holmes putting on a display like some magician. I turned to him, half expecting to find him standing with his arms out while calling “Ta-da!” 

Instead, he was frowning down at the envelope he had been sent, and the photos enclosed. His eyes were dull, and he looked lost in his own head. 

“How did you know?”

Holmes looked up at me with a scowl at interrupting the flow of his thoughts. “Know what?” he sulked at me. 

I gestured back towards the door where the commissionaire had just dashed out. “How did you know he was a Marine? His rank, even.” 

“I don’t have time for meaningless things right now.” Holmes snapped out, then sagged. He gave me a smile before shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. You just interrupted me.” He padded to his bedroom, talking over his shoulder as if he expected me to follow him. I leaned on the door frame while he dressed, and continued on. “You really couldn’t tell what he used to be?” 

I shook my head, and offered him up the shirt that he pointed at for me to give him. 

“It’s not that easy to explain  how  I know.” Holmes chuckled as he peeled off the singlet he had slept in. I let out a low whistle at the tattoo that spread out over his slim stomach. A tangled knot that twisted to show a tree with branches that grew into its roots in a continuous cycle around his navel. Holmes followed my gaze to the black ink, and gave me a pleased smile. “When I was doing my gap year, I made a study of tattoo artists and their designs. I took a bit of my work home with me.” Holmes turned so I could see his back. Going up his spine a musical stave erupted into a pair of faint wings formed by the notes. Just above the waistband of his underwear, cursive script declared  Effectus sequitir causam , and between his shoulder blades a beautiful bit of watercolour needed closer examination. After a moment, I realised it was a fist sized green carnation. 

Well, that was one mystery solved, at least. 

After he buttoned his shirt over his chest, breaking my examination of his skin, Holmes rolled the cuffs of his sleeves up to his elbows and hunted around the floor for a new pair of jeans. “What would my tattoos say about me?” he asked over his shoulder, running a comb through his hair to sweep it back off of his face. 

“I… Well, that you’re a queer nerd.” I mumbled after a moment of shifting in place. 

“Exactly,” Holmes took the little silver hoop off of his lip and replaced it with a clear plug. “It’s not a difficult thing to figure out. So, you noticed my tattoos, but you didn’t see his. It was clear from across the street when he reached up to shield his eyes from the sun. The inside of his wrist had the globe over the anchor, plus his sergeant’s bars. Even if he hadn’t, his stance and gait was incredibly similar to yours.” Holmes turned around with a shrug. “You see how easy it is?” 

“That’s wonderful!” I declared with a grin. 

“It was simple.” Holmes tried to correct me, but he ducked his head to hide the small smile that spread over his lips. “Anyway, it seems like I’ll have something to do today.” He tossed me the envelope which I caught one handed before it hit me in the face. 

“Good Lord,” I breathed as I looked at the crime scene photos. “This is horrible.” 

Holmes sat on the edge of his bed to lace up a pair of boots. “Can you read the note for me?” he asked, sticking his foot in the air to tighten the laces on his calves. 

“My dear Sherlock,” I began to read, then stopped, giving my friend a stare. He waved his hand at me to continue, but a blush stretched from his hairline down into his shirt. 

“My  dear  Sherlock,

“Last night, there was a bit of a to do in Lauriston Gardens, just off the Brixton Road. The building is meant to be empty for construction, so when our officer on the beat saw a light on in a window, he went to investigate. I’m sure you know what I’m going to say here, but yes. He found a body. There was blood all round the room, but the victim had no visible wounds. He still had his watch, his mobile, and his wallet, with two hundred American dollars, and seventy-five pounds, as well as his ID. Enoch Drebber, from Cleveland, Ohio. We can’t see how he got into the rooms, let alone how he was killed. If you could come and give us a hand, you’ll find me on the scene. Nothing’s been touched, waiting on you. I’ll be in your debt,

“Tobias Gregson.” 

The letter was scribbled on the back of a restaurant receipt, and was clipped to a collection of Polaroid photos. They showed a middle-aged man in a posh suit stretched out on the dusty floor of an abandoned room. 

“Tobi’s one of the smartest at the Yard.” Holmes had scrubbed his hands over his cheeks to get rid of the redness. “He and Lestrade are the least of so many evils. I sort of hope that they are working the case together. They’re always at each other’s throats, especially when I’m involved in a case.” 

I was amazed that he could speak so casually, when I was holding photos of a corpse. “Holmes, this is serious. Should I go and hail a cab for you?” 

Holmes flopped backwards on his bed with his arms spread out on either side of him. “I still haven’t decided if I’m going to go.” He kicked his legs like a petulant child then propped himself back up on his elbows. “Getting dressed has drained me.” 

“I’m supposed to be the lazy one here.” I muttered, rolling the envelope. I walked forward and smacked Holmes on one knee with it. “This bloke’s practically begging you for help. And he’s giving you the opportunity you were looking for earlier.” 

With a snort, Holmes sat up and grabbed the letter to skim through it quickly. “You’d never heard of me before our friend told you about me, right?” When I shook my head, Holmes rolled his eyes and thrust the paper back at me. “Of course you didn’t. Because no one knows about me. They never hear about me, and what I do. Let’s just say I  do  go along with this, and help them pick the case apart. I’ll lay you a hundred quid that Gregson, Lestrade, all the rest of them, they’ll be the ones that get the glory. Their names will be in the papers, while I do all the hard work.” 

Holmes looked hurt as he said this, drawing his legs up to his chest and resting his chin on one knee. I sat beside him and awkwardly rubbed his back. He stiffened for a moment at the contact before smiling and leaning into the touch like a cat. “It sounds like he’s got a lot of respect for your skills.” I pointed out. 

“Oh, he’s free and open with his praise in private. When it’s just the two of us, he’ll admit that I’m more than just a kid looking for something to occupy myself. He’d sooner bite off his own tongue and swallow it than say it to anyone else. If he knew you’d read that note, he’d be humiliated.” 

I pursed my lips in a tight, annoyed line at his description and moved my hand up to cup the back of his neck. “Wouldn’t it be satisfying to solve it, when he’s looking at it like a berk? You can have a chuckle at them all, if nothing else.” 

That seemed to almost startle a laugh out of Holmes. He grinned at me and nodded, unfolding himself from his huddle. “You’re right. I may as well give it a once over, just to see what has him so confused.” The dark mood appeared to have passed as quickly as it arrived, and Holmes bounced up from the bed. He buckled a belt around his slim hips and turned to stare at me expectantly. “Why aren’t you getting dressed? You can hardly head to a crime scene in coffee stained jim jams.” 

“What, you want me to come with?” 

Holmes shooed me upstairs to my bedroom. “It’s not like you’ve got anything better to do!” 

Twenty minutes later, we were in a cab on our way to Brixton Road. 

Holmes looked over each of the Polaroids carefully before tucking them into an inner pocket of his jacket. “You were what, Lance Corporal?” he asked after a few minutes of silence.

I sketched out a salute with a smirk and nodded. “I was promoted a couple of months before I was shot.” I replied, happy for the distraction from the dark thoughts that were forming in my head. Between the dreary March weather causing my shoulder and arm to ache, and the morbid task we were heading towards, I had been feeling quite low. 

“And did you have…?” His fingers moved in the air, as if he was sketching something. 

It took me a moment to understand what he was too timid to ask properly. “Yeah, a couple. I had one before I went.” Unzipping my jacket, I pushed the sleeve of my shirt up over my biceps. Immediately, Holmes leaned in to examine the silver oak with the blue stripe that wound around it. He pulled a small, high powered lens from his pocket and passed it over my skin. 

“I would like to take pictures of this later.” 

I grinned and slipped my arm back into my jacket. “For your study? Sure, if you like. But you’ll need to pay me to get shots of the rest of them.” 

This time, it was Holmes’ turn to look confused before he stammered out “Well, I’ll have to see if this business pays anything.” while looking down at his folded hands in his lap. 

I took pity on him, and changed the flow of the conversation. “Do you have any thoughts on the case?” 

“No, I don’t have enough information yet.” he replied with a smile of thanks at being brought back onto familiar ground. “The worst mistake an investigator can make is to start forming opinions before they have all the facts. It creates bias.” 

“Well,” I gestured out the window. “It looks like you’re going to get your info soon. We’re almost here.” 

Holmes leaned forward and knocked on the glass partition to get the driver’s attention. “Stop, we’ll get out here.” 

We were still half a block away from the housing complex, a cluster of small rundown old tenement buildings, but we finished the rest of the trip on foot. One of them had a sign saying that there was vacancies for one- and two-bedroom units, while one had scaffolding erected around it. The third had boards over the windows on the first couple of floors. There were several uniformed officers standing about, chatting and sipping coffee, relying on the yellow tape to keep back the onlookers. The gardens that gave the little complex its name were little more than a concrete block sandbox, with a single decorative pine and a few shriveled hostas. 

I was surprised when Holmes didn’t get right to his task. Instead of going up to the building to have a look around, he wandered around in lazy circles, looking at the mud and the grass, the loose pebbles from the side of the walkway. Once or twice he stopped in his tracks and let out a pleased laugh before moving on. 

The walkway was so trodden down under the footprints of the officers and forensic crew that I couldn’t see what he could possibly be finding, but just in that day alone, Holmes had already shown me how skilled he was. I had no doubt that he was seeing something that neither I nor the police could fathom. 

We eventually made our way up to the door where we were met by one of the detective inspectors who shook my friend’s hand and quietly thanked him for coming. He was taller than Holmes, with soft blond hair and the sort of skin that would sear if he stayed in the sun for too long. After Holmes’ description of him earlier, I was irritated at just how attractive he was. 

“I made sure nothing was touched for you.” he murmured. 

Holmes snorted and rolled his eyes, stabbing a finger at the mud. “I wish you actually  had !” he bit out. “Look at this. It’s like someone led a marathon through here. Of course, you’ve already taken everything you can find from the grounds before you let something like this happen, right Tob-- Gregson?” 

Rocking from foot to foot, the DI looked at his notepad to evade the accusation. “Well, I was so busy in the house. I left the grounds and the street to Lestrade.” 

Holmes raised his eyebrows at me with a crooked smile. “Between you and Lestrade working so hard, I don’t see what else there could be left for me to find.” he drawled. I grinned at him, knowing that I was completely done for. 

Gregson nodded, not catching the sting, and tucked his notepad back into his pocket. “Exactly, we’ve done all we can here.” Turning on his heel, he walked back into the building, fully expecting us to fall into step behind him. I’d had a CO like him when I first enlisted. I hadn’t much liked that man, either. “It’s a strange scene. I know how much you like those, ‘Lock.” 

“Did you get here in a cab?” Holmes asked, trotting forward to walk beside Gregson. So far, the DI hadn’t seemed to register my existence. 

“No, I parked my car down on the corner and walked up.” 

“What about Lestrade?” 

“His car’s across the street.”

“Right, then let’s go see the body.” Holmes brushed past Gregson and strode into the building, leaving the man to stare after him. 

We climbed the stairs in single file to find the crime scene. It was dusty and damp at the same time, giving me an itch at the back of my palate. Holmes examined the door briefly around the hinges and bolts, then stepped inside, gesturing for me to follow him. I looked around the room, my good mood from earlier vanishing completely at the sight of the body sprawled out on the floor. 

The room was fairly large, made bigger by the gaping hole in one of the interior walls. Exposed wires showed where people had gutted the place for the copper. The plaster was torn back and old newspaper insulation scattered the floor. Along the far wall, the showpiece of the flat was a fireplace with an imitation marble mantelpiece, coated in a thick layer of dust and grime. 

But my attention was on the body in the middle of the room, with its dull, empty eyes fixed on the peeling ceiling. The dead man had been middle-aged, with broad shoulders and curly black hair. His cheeks were plump, and covered with dark stubble. His suit looked like it was bespoke, and probably cost more than my entire wardrobe. 

Despite not showing any signs of physical trauma, it was obvious that his death had not been an easy one. His legs were tangled together, showing that he had spasmed after collapsing. A grimace had twisted his face into an expression of anguish and rage, and his fingernails had pulled back from scratching at the floorboards. 

Lestrade was leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. He greeted Holmes and Gregson with a sniff. “This one’s going to be all over the papers.”

“No new information?” Gregson asked. 

“Nah, nothing that I’ve been able to find.” Lestrade answered, pushing himself off the frame to pace the room. 

Holmes knelt beside the body and leaned over it with a frown. “You’re sure there’s no wound on the body?” he asked, gesturing to the blood spattered around on the floor. 

Both Gregson and Lestrade insisted that there hadn’t been. 

“Right, so that means the blood is from the second person. The murderer, most likely.” His nose wrinkled with distaste at the victim’s suit. 

Being careful where he put his knees, Holmes looked the body over. His eyes had a faraway, almost vacant look to them, as if he was seeing something invisible to the rest of us. Sniffing at the dead man’s lips, he frowned and rose back up to glance at me. “Watson, I need your expertise here.” 

“Wait,” Gregson stepped in. “Who is this?” 

I crouched down next to Holmes. “I’m just the offsider.” I let my accent shift and thicken with a smirk. 

At Holmes’ direction, I gave the body an examination of my own. “Time of death was about three o’clock. I couldn’t say the exact cause without a postmortem.” I stood, helping Holmes to his feet. 

After confirming that the body hadn’t been moved other than what was needed for a cursory examination, Holmes told the inspectors that they could remove it. A stretcher was brought in, and as Drebber’s body was lifted onto it, a chiming of metal on the floorboards rang out. 

A ring had fallen from his pocket and rolled across the floor, bouncing off the wall to finally spin to a stop. Lestrade stooped to pick it up with the end of his pen, holding it to the meagre light that came in through the grimy window. “There’s been a woman here. This is a lady’s wedding band.” He slipped the ring into an evidence bag and handed it over to Holmes. 

I looked over my friend’s shoulder to see. It was plain, unadorned gold, with the initials L.D. and ‘97 engraved on the inside. It was beat up and scratched all over, but the metal was bright and gleaming. 

“Great, just what we need.” Gregson muttered at the sight of the band. “More complications to this thing.” 

One of Holmes’ brows arched up and he returned the ring to Lestrade. “I’d say it simplifies them a bit.” He shrugged and tucked his hands into his pockets. “What did you find on the body?” 

Gregson consulted his notepad again, checking off each item with a worn down pencil. 

“A Barraud & Lunds piece converted into a wristwatch,” 

My brows shot up and I craned my neck to take another look at the remains on the gurney. 

“A gold ring, with what appears to be a religious symbol.” Gregson carried on. “Two American Express bills, one for an Enoch J. Drebber, the other for a Joseph Stangerson. A gold ID bracelet with E.J.D. engraved on the plate.”

“A MedicAlert bracelet?” I asked, earning a glower from the DI, whose face flushed at my interruption. 

“No, just a piece of pretty. If I can continue?” He sniffed and flipped through his notepad before closing it with a snap. “Never mind. I don’t need to.” 

“Did the bills have London addresses for them?” Holmes asked, crouching down again to see the indent the ring had left on Drebber’s finger. 

“No, they were for somewhere in New York.” Gregson replied, double checking his notes. “But there were recent charges for tickets on a cruise for them both.” 

Holmes hummed softly and shot his hand up, obviously expecting me to haul him back up. I had to use my bad arm, giving a wince as I stood him straight. “Lucky you’re a skinny little thing,” I muttered under my breath, reaching my hand under my jacket to massage my shoulder. 

My friend made a sympathetic sound in the back of his throat before turning his attention back to the case at hand. “I assume you’ve called the Cleveland PD, to see if they have any information on this Drebber.” 

“Well, I left a message.” Gregson mumbled. “They’ll get back to me when they get a chance.” 

“So you didn’t ask any  particular  questions?” 

It was like watching a student try to explain to his instructor why not only was his homework not completed, he’d failed to even bring his textbooks home with him. The fact that Gregson had a good seventeen or eighteen years on Holmes made it even better. “I asked about Stangerson as well.” 

Holmes paced the room, looking for all the world like he was pacing on a stage. “And there was nothing, no little thing that you think you should have asked them about? No detail that hinges the entire case, that you might want to call them back about?” 

Gregson straightened and folded his arms over his chest, blowing a snort through his nose. “I’ve asked them everything I needed to know. They’ll contact me when they have answers.” 

Pressing the backs of his fingers to his lips, Holmes stifled a small laugh. He opened his mouth to say more, but Lestrade began smacking the side of his torch as the battery began to die. The light flickered a few times before it came back to full life. The beam slid across the wall before Lestrade loud a triumphant shout. 

“I  thought  I’d seen this!” Looking like he was telling a ghost story, with the beam of the torch under his chin, Lestrade whirled around to us. He waved the coroners to finally remove the body, then beckoned us over to the corner of the room. “Take a look.” He shone the light on a space of the wall, well above his head. 

In coarse, scratched lettering, the near black shade of dried blood was a morbid inscription--

RACHE

Lestrade seemed to be mimicking Holmes, and with the excitement of a seedy car salesman, he smacked the wall near the mark. “And what do you think of  that ?” He rocked from his heels to his toes and back again a few times as if he couldn’t properly contain his eagerness. “It was written in the killer’s blood.” His watery eyes practically gleamed. “His own damned blood! Well, that rules out Drebber committing suicide. There was definitely someone in the room with him here, and they did the bleeding.” 

“And what does it tell us, now you’ve found it?” Gregson asked, his tone bored and depreciating. Behind their backs, Holmes and I shared a smirk. I was beginning to worry I would need to step in between a slapping or hair pulling session. 

“Mean? Isn’t it obvious?” Lestrade reached out and traced his finger in the air a few inches from the word, finishing it off with an L. “Someone was writing the name Rachel. Must have gotten interrupted before they could finish. Regardless, when we figure this thing out, there’s going to be a woman named Rachel at the end of it. Oi! Sherlock, stop your laughing!” 

“I’m sorry,” Holmes squeaked from trying to keep his laughter in check. “I really… I’m just…” Reaching out, Holmes caught Lestrade by the arm, and turned to smile to both of the men. "Please understand that if I insult your intelligence, it is only because everything about your personality and your history with me makes it impossible for me not to."            

If not a hair pulling session, then I might definitely need to step in to protect the mouthy brain. Thankfully, Holmes carried on before the DIs had a chance to bellow. 

“I’m going to do a thorough examination of the room.” With that, Holmes took a tape measure and his lens from his pocket. He trotted round the room, stopping to measure or examine things that only seemed to be of interest to him. From time to time he dropped to his knees. 

“Holmes, be careful of the dust. Don’t-- Okay, or just faceplant. That works, too.” I sighed, watching him stretch out on his front.  

He seemed completely lost in his head, chattering and whistling and encouraging himself with each circuit of the room. A few times, he let out a high trill of giggles and clapped his hands together. 

Watching him, I was reminded of the K9 units they had with my squad in Afghanistan. Hard-working, but clearly enjoying the job as they whined in eagerness. I could easily imagine Holmes pacing about, straining at a collar and lead in his excitement, and I needed to slam the brakes on that thought before it ran away from me. 

“Zip your jacket, Watson.” Holmes chirped at me on his way past, looming over the word on the wall. 

“Shut it, you.” I ducked my head and shifted in position to deal with things. 

Gregson and Lestrade had followed Holmes’ route around the room, but were looking on the amateur with no small amount of contempt. It was clear that they were just humouring him. I bristled, seeing the looks on their faces. They didn’t appreciate the hard work Holmes was putting in for them. 

“So, what do you think?” 

Holmes clasped his hands behind his back, and I could see that his fingers were twitching. “I’d hate to take the credit from you both, if I were to help you figure this out.” he remarked. “You’re doing so well on your own, after all.” The sarcasm was dripping from Holmes’ voice as he spoke. “I’ll leave the pair of you to the rest of it. I might just have a word with the officer that found the body. Can I have his name and address?” 

“His name’s John Rance. Off duty now, of course. He works nights.” Lestrade took a card from his pocket and gave it to Holmes, who tucked it into his wallet. 

“Come along, Watson.” Holmes slipped his arm into the curve of my elbow and leaned on me. “We’ll go look him up, then see if we can’t find something to do for the rest of the day.” He tugged on my arm to lead me almost to the door where he stopped and looked back over my shoulder. “Oh!” He lifted a finger in the air. “I should tell you, in case this helps you with the case… This  was  a murder. The perpetrator is a man, approximately six feet and four inches high,” He lifted his hand a couple inches above his own head. “Despite his height, he has small feet. He smokes hand rolled cigarettes. He drove the victim here in a car, with one new tire, the other three are all weather radials. Very likely, he has a flushed red face, rather like Gregson is sporting now, and the fingernails of his right hand are very long and rough.” Chewing his lip, Holmes shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry if that doesn’t help shed any light on the case.” 

“Right, you punk. How was he killed, then?” Gregson bit out. 

“Poison, obviously.” Holmes tightened his grip on my arm and we headed out of the room. He stopped just shy of the door and leaned back in. “Oh, and Lestrade? Rache is German for ‘revenge,’ so I wouldn’t waste any time looking for a Rachel.” 

With a twitch of his hips and a merry salute, Holmes turned on his heel and dragged me down the stairs before he doubled over in a fit of laughter. 


	4. What John Rance Had To Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holmes and Watson strike out on their own to investigate the murder without the help of the official police force, and begin to see just how well they work together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to learn maths for this chapter!

It was well into the afternoon by the time we left Lauriston Gardens. For half an hour, we walked around, Holmes holding his mobile up above his head while he tried to find a wifi hotspot. He kept his free hand tucked into my elbow for warmth until he finally slid it down my arm to link our fingers together. Eventually, we needed to go into a cafe to use their service.

I ordered us each a coffee and a pastry to share while Holmes typed out a long email. When that was done, he led me to the nearest tube station so we could head to the address Lestrade had given him. We were in a crowded car, so I shouldered my way to one of the bars and held on. Holmes slipped his thin hands inside my jacket to keep his balance. Even through my shirt I could feel how cold they were, so I reached down to chafe them until they began to warm.

“I think I’ve got nearly everything sorted out.” Holmes murmured. “We’ll learn a few other things from PC Rance, but those will just be minor details to prove the rest of it.”

“How can you possibly think you know everything?” I asked, giving his fingers a squeeze under my jacket. “We’re not with Gregson anymore, Holmes. You don’t need to pretend to be all knowing.”

Holmes sniffed and pinched my side. “I’m not pretending anything. It’s pretty simple, really. When I was in the laneway, I could easily see the marks in the mud from the tyres of a cab. As you told me, time of death was approximately three o’clock. It rained last night from nine, to about midnight. Which means any marks that were made in the mud would have needed to be made after midnight. It was the only vehicle that came into the lane any time after the rain. The tracks showed all four of the tyres, at the spot where it turned around to leave. One was different from the other three.”

“All right, so that’s the cab covered.” I conceded that point to him. It was almost as much fun, hearing him explain how he came to his conclusions as it had been watching him find the facts. “How did you guess the man’s height?”

“By looking at the length of his stride. The footprints in the mud outside the passenger side of where the cab would have been parked matched many of the footprints in the dust up in the empty flat. To figure out a person’s general height, to within an inch or so in either direction, you would divide the length of their stride by .43.” Holmes began to pick up his pace as he spoke, obviously in his element. “The cab driver had a stride, on average, of about thirty-three inches. So, it was just a quick calculation rather than a guess. He was either six foot and three, four, or five inches. I decided to shoot for the middle.” He gave me a smug little smile. “Then, there was the writing. If you were to write on a wall, where would you put the lettering?”

“In front of my eyes.” I replied without giving it much thought.

“Of course you would. So would nearly everyone else. The word was an inch and a half above my own eyes.”

“But couldn’t he have… No.” I shook my head. “He could have written the word higher to throw someone off, but it would have been hard for him to fake his stride without there being little hitches and slides in the dust.” Holmes beamed at me and I felt a little thrill spreading through my belly. “His hand rolled smokes, then? Or his fingernails? How did you guess those?” I could see that using the word ‘guess’ was beginning to grate on Holmes’ nerves. “Sorry. How did you figure out those points?”

“The nails were just as simple as his pace. When he wrote in his blood on the wall, he left scrapes in the wallpaper from his fingernails. Meaning they have to be long enough to go past the pads of his fingers.” Holmes scratched his nails against my back to demonstrate. “The cigarettes… Well, that’s a bit more specialised. Not to sound too smug--”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of accusing you of that.” I snorted, earning another pinch.

“Fine, I’m smug about it. I am a bit of an expert at cigarette ash. In with the ash from the tobacco I found, I could see a bit of the paper left over, where it had been folded over itself. Since there was no smell of marijuana, it wasn’t a joint but the cigarette was rolled like one. Probably using Zig-Zag, or Rizla going by the thickness of the paper. Personally, I prefer OCB, even if it is a bit pricier.”

“I hope you haven’t put that in one of your little magazine articles.” I laughed, completely amazed by how easy he made it all sound. “His face. You said his face was flushed up. How could you possibly know that?”

Holmes held his hands up in defeat for a moment before tucking them back inside my jacket. “That one was more of a guess. But I’m sure that I’m right about it. In fact, a fiver says that when we meet the murderer, he’ll be beet red.”

I scrubbed my hand over my face and pinched the bridge of my nose. “This is starting to make my brain hurt.” I complained as we came to our station stop. Without question, we linked our fingers together on our way through the doors. “I’m sure that it’s getting clearer for you, but every new bit of info you’re giving me, the more it all seems tangled. How did the two men get to the flat? Where’s the cabbie? What sort of poison did they use, and why would the victim take it in the first place?” With each new point, I almost stomped my boots on the pavement, getting more and more frustrated. “Whose blood is all over the place? Whose ring did we find?” I tugged on my bottom lip a few times and sighed. “Revenge for what?”

Rubbing his thumb over my knuckles, Holmes smiled at me. “You’ve wrapped all the problems up pretty neatly there, yes. Those are the parts of the puzzle that I’m missing. But the writing of the word in German was a blind. Going by the lettering, if it was written by a German they probably never lived in that country.” Holmes stopped me in my tracks and turned me around so we were face to face. “I’m not going to tell you much more about the whys and hows of the case.” For a brief moment, he looked down at his toes, rocking slightly from side to side. “Right now, you think I’m impressive. The more I tell you about how I work, and how I come to my conclusions… Well, you’ll start to think there’s nothing special about me.”

 _And then you’ll lose interest in me._ The unspoken part rang just as clearly in my ears as all the rest.

“That’s never going to happen.” I promised, pinching the point of Holmes’ chin between my thumb and forefinger to tip his head back up. “It doesn’t matter if I know how you do it. No one else does what you are doing, Holmes. And that makes you damned amazing in my eyes.”

Holmes flushed up, his cheeks going such a shade of blotchy red, that I couldn’t help but cup them to see if they were hot to the touch. He couldn’t have looked more keen or pleased, if I had complimented his appearance. With a flutter of his lashes, Holmes lowered his gaze once more.

“I-- ah-- I’ll tell you one more thing, now you’ve reminded me. When those two men walked into the flat, they were this close.” He gestured to the few scant inches between us. “Possibly with their arms around each other. So the victim trusted his killer.”

“Or was drunk.” I replied.

“Yes, or was drunk.” Holmes shook off his flustered bashfulness with a grateful pat on my hip. “Now, let’s go speak to this man Rance. I want to go dancing tonight, and we still need to eat.”

For the most part, we had been walking as we spoke, working our way through some seedy back alleys to a low-rent block of flats.

“It looks like John Rance is recently divorced.” Holmes looked down at the card from Lestrade, then up to the building numbers. “From a very angry wife. Probably had an affair.”

Kids played in the alley while mothers looked on, a few older boys wrestling over a rugby ball while a little girl did laps around us in a plastic pedal car. Overhead, between the two buildings, drying laundry hung from washing lines and people chatted to their neighbours through the windows. One of the boys called an insult after us, which I chose to ignore, but tightened my hold on Holmes’ hand.

A young woman with a bad dye job and a faux silk dressing gown answered the door when we found Rance’s flat. She invited us in, waving thick smoke out the window before going to wake the PC up. “He works the night shift.” she explained over her shoulder and gestured for us to sit on the sofa to wait.

After taking a look at the shoes that were laid out near the door, Holmes brushed some crumbs to the floor then took a seat and looked around the small flat. “Will you take any notes that seem relevant?” he asked and handed me a small notepad and a pencil from one of the inner pockets of his jacket.

I settled down next to him and flipped through to a fresh page. I dated it, and made a note of the time and the address we were at. By the time I was finished, Rance came out of his bedroom in his pyjama bottoms. He scratched his belly as he gave us each a sour look at our interruption.

“I already filled out my paperwork when my shift ended.” he grumbled.

“Oh, well in that case--” Holmes took his wallet out of his back pocket and opened it. With a click of his tongue, he took out a fold of bills, holding it between two fingers while he looked through the wallet to find his own business card. “We’d hoped to hear it directly from you, but if you remember anything that you might have omitted from the report, you can reach me here.” Holmes held out the card with same hand that still held the money.

Rance darted his tongue over his bottom lip as he looked at the bills- about sixty pounds in fives and tens. “I think I might be able to go over it again.” He waved off the card.

“Oh, excellent.” Holmes took the card back, closing his fingers around the money as he settled back. “Just tell us what you remember.”

The chair creaked and groaned as Rance sat down and leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. His face scrunched up in concentration to make sure he didn’t forget anything that had gone on the night before.

“I’ve got the eight hour shift, overnight, from ten to six.” he began, scratching at his belly once more. “Around eleven, I had to break up a brawl at a pub, but from there it was pretty quiet. Was close to midnight, when I parked my patrol car and checked in with dispatch to see if anything was going on. From there, I went to get a cup of coffee, and talked with one of the other blokes that does the patrol a few blocks away. It was raining when I came outta the cafe.” While he was talking, Rance tapped his fingertips together each time he listed a new part of his shift. “It was getting to be that time of night when nothing’s going on anywhere unless it’s a domestic. I just wanted to be home with a beer. Anyway, I took a turn down toward the Gardens, you know, to take a poke around to look for anyone sleeping rough.”

More like he knew that it would be a quiet place to catch a nap.

“I know that a couple of the buildings down in that area are all boarded up until they can get seen to by the city. Could take months, or years. But, I see this light up in one of the windows, in the flat that’s supposed to be locked up.” Rance looked incredibly pleased with himself. “So, I know something’s up. I go up to the door--”

“You stopped though.” Holmes interrupted. “And turned back to go to the gate. Why did you do that?”

Rance nearly jolted up out of his chair with surprise. “I don’t know how you can know that, but yeah. I did. It was just so dead and quiet there, I was a bit worried about going in alone. I went back to see if that other officer was nearby. But he’d already gone off in his car. I grabbed my torch and headed back up to the flat with the light I’d seen.”

“The wiring was torn out of the wall, there’s no way a light could have come from the building itself.” Holmes frowned.

“It was one of those emergency press lights, like you get for kids when they’re scared of the dark. It was stuck up on the mantelpiece when I got in, right near the window. Of course, I didn’t really care much about the light after I saw the body what was on the floor there.”

“Yes, the body. So, you knelt down to look at the remains, checked it for vital signs, then walked the room twice. You tried the window, but found it locked.”

This time, Rance jumped out of his chair. He looked down at Holmes with a mix of suspicion and fear on his face. “Oi, you sound like you were right over my shoulder. How can you know all of this without being involved?” he demanded.

Holmes laughed and flicked his card over onto Rance’s lap. “Relax, constable. Before you try to arrest me for murder, you may want to settle back down. I was called in by DIs Lestrade and Gregson to take a look over the scene. Your movements were easy to see in the dust. That wearing down on the tread of your shoes made it even easier. That’s not important, though. What did you do next?”

Rance reluctantly sat back down, but he kept the card. “I went back down to my car and radioed to dispatch to send someone out. Soon enough, there were two patrol cars out, and the forensic teams were on their way.”

Holmes pressed his calf to mine to make sure I was paying attention. “While you were waiting for the others, was the area still empty?”

“Well, empty of anyone of importance.” he chuckled.

I could see that Holmes was biting the insides of his cheeks to keep his annoyance in check. “Meaning that there was someone there.” he muttered flatly.

The constable broke out into a broad grin. “Oh, Christ. I’ve dragged my share of drunks in during my patrols. Nearly got tossed in lock up a few times myself from getting a bit too lubricated. But I’ve never seen a man as pissed as that one was. He was leaning on the garden wall, singing some football chant and weaving back and forth. I had to pick him up off the ground a couple times.”

“What did he look like?” Holmes asked immediately.

Rance looked angry at being led away from his description of what was probably the highlight of his career. He blew air out through his nose and leaned back in his chair. “He was just a drunk. No big deal. I would’ve put him in my car, but I was too busy with the case.” He grumbled.

Holmes scowled at him. “You didn’t notice anything about him? His clothes, his hair, anything?”

“He was a tall bloke. Big, like. He must’ve been drinking hard and fast, his face was real red.”

Pale grey eyes lit up, and Holmes practically wriggled. “That’s it! What happened to him?”

“I suppose he poured himself into a cab, and made his way home.”

“Aye, I’d lay good money that he did.” Holmes mused, drumming his fingers together. “Was he wearing a lanyard around his neck?” When Rance shook his head, Holmes waved his fingers in the air. “He must have left it behind. Not important.” Handing over the money, my friend stood up and I followed. “Constable Rance, I suggest you look into a new line of work. You are never going to advance within the police service. Last night was your chance and you threw it away. You had your hands on the very man we’re looking for. Come on, Watson. We’ve got places to be.”

We left Rance sitting, counting out his money, and headed down to the street. “What a fucking idiot.” Holmes muttered when we were out in the cool air. He puffed into his hands and rubbed them together. “How could he have let that slip through his fingers?”

I took Holmes’ hands and helped him to flex his fingers to get the circulation going, making a mental not to make sure he didn’t go out without gloves again. “You’re sure the drunk was the killer? He matches your description of him, but why would he have returned to the crime scene when there was no one there? I understand that whole ‘return to the scene of the crime’ thing, but isn’t that usually just after the crime has been discovered? Don’t they return to look for an audience?”

Holmes led us out to the main road and hailed us a cab. “It was the ring. The ring is why he came back.” He swatted my thigh in excitement after giving our address. “If it comes down to it, we’ll be able to bait him out with the ring.” Holmes’ eyes almost glowed as he turned to me. “I’ll have him, Watson. I swear, I’ll have him soon.”

He was grinning, excited and a little bit mad, and grabbed either side of my face before kissing me hard and deep. His tongue scraped over my teeth quickly, then he pulled back with a laugh. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have gone if not for you. This might never have been solved if not for you. This has been the best study of crime I’ve seen since I started this.” He chuckled and snuggled back down next to my side. “A study in scarlet.” he mused aloud with a little snicker. “I quite like the sound of that. The blood. The red face. Scarlet.” He waved his hands in the air to banish his busy thoughts. “We’ll forget about it for now. Let’s get home and have a bite to eat, then we’ll head back out. I still want to go dancing. There’s a great club that I think you might enjoy as well, they play all sorts of music.”

With that, Holmes began to sway from side to side, singing in a sweet, lark-like voice with his eyes half-closed.

The rest of the ride back to the flat, my head whirled with the sounds of his song, thoughts of murder, and the feeling of his lips rough against my own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It begins....


	5. Our Advertisement Brings A Visitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To take their minds off the case for a while, Holmes takes Watson dancing. Which, in hindsight, might not have been the best idea he's had of late. His way of making up for it, on the other hand, definitely is one of his smarter decisions.  
> Oh, and there is a visitor to the flat, and Holmes gets tricked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a brief scene of Watson having something like an anxiety attack in this chapter. I based it mostly off of my own experiences in situations like he is in.

I was completely drained by the time we got home. Between the cold and the stress and hauling Holmes up off the floor, my shoulder was protesting every movement. Holmes took pity on me and bundled me up on the sofa while he ran a few errands that he said were to do with the case. After dozing off for a while, I woke to a bacon sandwich being waved under my nose.

While I worked my way through the snack, I watched Holmes flit about the room as he got ready to go back out. He eventually perched up on a chair with a mirror in front of him, plucking his eyebrows with a pair of tweezers that I’m fairly certain he stole out of my first aid kit.

“Silver, or blue?” he asked over the rim of the mirror.

After sucking some crumbs off my fingers and thumbs, I raised my brows. “Why not both?”

His already sparkling eyes soon glittered all the brighter after he grinned and lined them each with black pencil. Holmes painted his lids pale blue, then dusted them with silver. The final effect was to make him look like some wide-eyed Fae. “Want some?” He waved his mascara wand menacingly.

I laughed and ducked away, dashing up to my room to change into something a bit less splashed with bacon grease. I shaved, tugged on a fresh pair of jeans, and was just pulling my shirt on over my head when I heard a soft sound from the door.

“Your shoulder still pains you. You hide it well.” Holmes murmured.

“Ah, yes.” I looked down at my shoulder, rolling the other one in a crooked shrug. “Only when I lift it too high.”

“Or pick someone up off the floor,” he finished for me and crossed the room. Before I had a chance to put up a protest, he uncapped his eye pencil and expertly lined the corners of my eyes with it. “It will help with the lights.” he explained.

I marvelled at how easily Holmes was able to set aside the day’s events. He didn’t mention the case once in the time it took us to get to the club. My few attempts to talk to him about it were deflected to lighter topics.

Before long, we were making our way down a steep flight of stairs. The front facade of the building had been plain and unassuming, but as soon as we passed through the door at the bottom of the stairs, I was hit with a near physical wall of music.

Over the course of just a few ragged breaths I had lost Holmes. I turned in a few circles to look for him, catching someone’s elbow in my ribs. Cursing through my teeth, I shoved the dancer away from me. A hand caught me by the wrist, and I whirled, lip curled back. I froze in place and drank in the sight of my friend.

Holmes rubbed his thumb over the inside of my wrist in rhythmic circles until my pulse started to slow. I accepted the bottle of water that he pressed into my hand, and drained half of it. It was too loud to speak, so Holmes drew me close to him as the tempo of the music changed to something slower.

He guided my hands around his waist, and threaded his arms around my neck. Holmes held my head still so I could only look into his eyes as he moved us. He mouthed the words along to the song playing through the speakers, his lips curved up into a reassuring smile.

By the second song, I had started to relax.

By the third, I was able to move out of his grip without wanting to take a swing at a stranger.

The fourth song had me moving in time with Holmes, our fingers linked above our heads, ignoring the pain that radiated down from my shoulder. It was fast with a deep bass, and people around us were jumping on their toes in a churning sea of bodies. A set of lights spun and flashed, bouncing off the walls and the dancers. They changed colours, ranging from blue to green to red in quick succession.

After a few songs with his back pressed to my chest, Holmes turned and leaned close, gripping my shoulders to yell that he needed another drink. I held onto his belt so we didn’t get separated again. As soon as we stopped dancing, the tension from earlier began to rush back. People were pressing too close on all sides. The lights flickering white and red were becoming too familiar, and gave the dancers around us a bloodsoaked appearance.

My hands fell from Holmes’ belt, and as soon as he felt the loss he turned to look at me. His hand was in mine, but I could hardly register it until nails dug into my palms. With a yelp, I came back to myself to find I was being towed along one wall of the seedy club. Holmes dragged me like a child into a bathroom.

He didn’t pay any mind to the two pairs of shoes that were shuffling around together in one of the stalls, or a pair of bare knees on the floor of another.

“This was one of my worst ideas,” he cringed, filling his cupped hands with water and sprinkling it on my cheeks. “What happened? Did someone grab you?”

I scrubbed at my face with the sleeve of my shirt and shook my head. “The lights. Blood. Flashing.” I stammered out.

“A flashback?” Rather than touching any of the surfaces in the room, Holmes used his elbow to crank out some paper towels from the dispenser. He swabbed my cheeks and drew down the collar of my shirt to dab at my chest. I caught his thin wrist in the circle of my fingers to stop him from moving along my collarbone.

“Not quite. Just a bit of a breakdown.” I explained and batted the towels away from my face. Leaning heavily on the counter, I stuck my head under the tap and let the cold water pound the tightness out of the back of my skull. When I came back up for air, Holmes had lit me a cigarette.

The back of my shirt was soaked as water poured down my neck, making the already thin cloth cling to my skin. “You’re the best,” I groaned, taking a long drag from the smoke. I exhaled after the burn and pressure in my chest got to be too much, only to inhale it again through my nostrils. It took me half of the cigarette to get my hands to stop shaking. “Sorry. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a place like this.” With my thumbnail, I flicked the ash into the sink then held the cigarette to Holmes.

He took it directly from my fingers with his lips before pinching it between finger and thumb. Standing up to my chest, Holmes cupped the back of my head and blew the smoke into my lungs. It forced me to breathe slowly, following his lead. He carded his fingers through the wet hair at the nape of my neck, humming softly until we finished the smoke.

“I’m sorry, Watson. I should have known something like this would happen.” He tossed the butt into the sink and looped his other hand around my neck. “I can be terribly single minded.”

I tried to wave off his concern, but when my fingers started to shake again, it wasn’t particularly effective. “I thought it would be fun. Really. I’ve been cooped up since I came home.” I gave up trying to keep a cool exterior, and sagged against Holmes with my chin on his shoulder. His shirt bunched up at the small of his back as I tangled it up in my hold. His slim frame was just like his handshake- deceptively strong, and comforting. “Today was the first time I really felt part of something since I was shot.” Turning my head, I pressed my nose into the side of Holmes’ neck.

He urged me to lift my head and pinched my chin to look me in the eyes. “You can be part of something tomorrow. Let’s get out of here before you break someone’s nose.”

“Or before someone comes out there and breaks yours!” one of the men from the stalls bellowed in a strained voice.

We left the place arm in arm, leaning heavily on each other. Holmes burrowed into my chest under my coat as we waited for a cab to stop and pick us up.

“Is it the case?” Holmes asked close to an hour later, after I had showered and had a few chocolates to settle the rest of my nerves. He had mixed me a scotch and soda, and nestled up against my side on the sofa.

I rolled the cool glass over my forehead and nodded. “It shouldn’t be, though. It was just a body. I’ve seen more of them than I can count.” The alcohol burned my throat on the way down, a pleasant distraction that still made me hiss. “When I was in Afghanistan, I watched the man next to me take a bullet through the throat, and barely batted an eye. Jesus, I was there when a roadside bomb took out a whole fucking section of men. People I considered my friends. And I scrubbed the blood off my hands and just went back to work. But this?” I shook my head and finished the drink. “It scared the hell out of me.”

Holmes stroked the backs of his fingers along my jaw and hummed. “I think I understand.” He made a vague gesture out the window. “When you were in Afghanistan, you saw what happened. You were there to witness it. There was no need to imagine the circumstances of the death. With this Brixton Road case, it is by its very virtue as a mystery, something that’s going to stimulate the imagination. Your head is full of all sorts of gruesome possibilities and devious plots.”

“Not just a pretty face, are you?” I chuckled, even if it sounded a bit forced.

Holmes smacked my knee, but hid a pleased smile. “Go to bed, Watson.”

While I was stripping out of my still damp shirt, I could hear Holmes pick up his violin and begin to tune it. It wasn’t until I was under the covers with the lights off that I realised that the near haunting tones were _Bà Bà Mo Leanabh_.

Before I drifted off to sleep, I took my mobile from my side table and sent a quick text of thanks to Stamford.

Even with the music Holmes was playing for me, dark thoughts still worked their way into my dreams. I don’t know how long I tossed and twisted around thinking about the case. Every time I fluttered my eyes, I could see the distorted face of Drebber staring up at me from the dusty, blood spattered floor.

“ _Wake up, Watson_.”

Drebber’s body flexed and spasmed on the wooden floor, fingers digging in hard enough to leave scored lines and tear back the nails.

“ _It’s a nightmare. Wake up._ ”

My mind supplied me with dozens of possibilities of where the blood had come from. And of what cruel acts Drebber may have committed to earn such a harsh vengeance from the hands of his killer.

A weight settled on top of me, warm and a bit bony. It smelled faintly of vanilla.

I woke with a snort, choking on my own spit. Off the top of my head, I can imagine a good dozen deaths more dignified than that, so I sat up and caught my breath. Holmes moved with me to sit on my lap.

“Why are you lying on me?” I asked, my mind still stupid and slow from sleep.

“I’m sitting on you, now,” Holmes pointed out. At my sharp look, he combed his fingers through my hair until it stood on end. “You were calling out in your sleep.” he murmured. “I didn’t know how else to wake you up.” He shifted his position to put his knees on either side of my lap. “This helped earlier.” Pressing close until our chests were touching, Holmes guided me back down onto the bed until he could brace his hands on the mattress.

“What are you doing?” I shivered in the cold and pulled the blankets back up around us both.

Holmes bent his elbows to lower himself enough to brush our noses together. “I’m offering physical comfort... Sex.” he finished simply. Avoiding my mouth, Holmes kissed my jaw, my cheek, and even my chin before moving back up to look me in the eyes.

I had to sit up again. Having him be the only thing I could see was making my head swim. “Do you actually want to do that?” Sitting up with him in my lap did nothing to help me focus. Holmes was warm, and a little damp from a hot shower, but his eyes were still smoky from his makeup. The sweet scent of vanilla was coming off of his skin.

It was easier to calm down though, when he rolled his eyes with an undignified snort. “If I didn’t want to do that, do you think I would have come up here to offer it?” Holmes cradled the sides of my neck and ducked his head down to press a kiss to my lips. Compared to the first, it was tender and gentle. I could almost hear the cogs turning in his head as he catalogued the way it felt and tasted.

“Rather a good point,” I mumbled, more than a bit dazed. I collapsed back onto my pillow and watched with a slack jaw while Holmes stripped his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor.

His skin was so pale, my tan hand looked like a dark bruise on his chest when I caressed him. As he sucked in a sharp breath, it seemed as if the tattoo over his stomach moved like snaking vines. I brushed my thumb over one of his tiny nipples to make him do it again.

Everything about him was so delicate that I was afraid to grip him too tightly or kiss him too hard.

I wasn’t fast enough to stop him from sliding his hands up under my shirt. “Don’t,” I whispered, trying to bring it back down around my waist.

Holmes tilted his head to the side for a moment then he leaned down to kiss me once more. “It’s dark. I can hardly see it. And I won’t laugh at it.”

It would be the first time that someone other than a doctor or nurse had seen it. In the last nine months, when I slept with anyone, it was either in pitch darkness, or I left my shirt on. Even Stamford had only felt it through the cloth of a singlet. I sat up and winced, steeling myself with a deep breath before dragging my shirt over my head. Biting my lip, I kept my eyes closed, waiting for the laugh that he promised wouldn’t happen.

Cold fingers traced the outline of the entry wound. I could hear Holmes swallow thickly while he explored, his thumb finding the surgical pins that held my shoulder together. It was a cobbled together mess of metal and shattered bone.

I cracked an eyelid to see a look of the most intense fascination across his open features. He was studying me closely, but it felt like the kiss. That he was drinking in this new information about me.

“May I?” His eyes regained their focus as he hovered his hand over the incision scar from the reconstruction. When I nodded, he followed the line, his finger dipping and tracing the poorly done suture marks, and the jagged bump where part of my clavicle had punctured the skin.

“If you lift your arse a bit, you can see where the bullet came out.” I allowed myself a bit of a grope as I helped Holmes to lift himself off my lap, then rolled over to my stomach.

As soon as I was stretched out on my front, I heard Holmes swear under his breath.

I had only seen photos of the exit wound, and those were taken while I was still in hospital. But I knew it was a bad enough image. Holmes settled himself on my arse, and instead of exploring the new injury as he had done with the first, he splayed his long fingers over my back and began to knead the tight muscles. I let out a sound that was alarmingly close to a purr, and turned to pliant putty under his hands.

Holmes massaged my back, finding knots and clusters of tender nerves that even my physical therapist had missed in my last session. After seeing the delicate way he worked with his microscope and slides, I wasn’t much surprised at how effortlessly he caressed away the tension. “Is this helping?” Holmes laid himself out on my back with his lips against the side of my ear. The only response I could give was a long, drawn out groan. It earned me a soft chuckle and a kiss to the ear. “I thought so.”

His lips moved along my neck to the other side where he nipped at my earlobe. Holmes began to rock his hips against my arse until I could feel him lengthen and thicken through the thin material of his pyjama bottoms and my underwear. Reaching back, I held his thigh, feeling the corded muscle flex under my palm.

I twisted beneath him, carefully rolling back over without jostling him about. I rested my hands on his hips, stroking my thumbs over the cloth to draw it tight. His erection strained against it before slipping through the fly.

Just like the rest of him, it was slim. Perhaps it was his height that gave the illusion, but it was short, with an upward curve from the tidy nest of black curls to the tight foreskin.

Holmes covered it with his hand and looked to the side while chewing the corner of his lip. “I know, it’s a bit sm--”

“Beautiful.” I finished for him. I took his hand away and kissed his knuckles, then turned it over to press my lips into the centre of his palm. With my free hand, I hooked my fingers under the waistband of his bottoms and drew it down past his hips. Our position meant that I couldn’t bring them down much further than halfway to his knees. Holmes leaned back on his hands and lifted himself up so I could drag them the rest of the way off.

In the weak light that streamed in from under the door, I explored with my fingers, caressing his thighs and belly. Holmes let out a breathy little squeak when I cupped his bollocks in the palm of my hand. They were smooth and high, lifting and dropping when Holmes swallowed thickly at the touch. His eyes were closed when I looked up at him, and his lips parted. Even with the lights off, I could see how flushed his cheeks were. It spread out down his throat and over his chest.

With him above me, my shyness was overpowered by how badly I wanted to see every detail of him. I sat up carefully, wrapping one arm around Holmes’ waist, and turned on the lamp beside us. I angled the shade away to keep it from shining in our eyes.

He was pink all over, with blotches of red. His erection was a dusky shade of rose, darkening to near purple where the head peeked out from the foreskin. A tiny droplet of precome had gathered at the tip, shining in the lamplight.

It was the first time I had seen him so open and vulnerable. I rested back on my elbows, content to admire him for a moment until he twitched his hips, sliding his arse over my own cock through my pants.

“In the side table?”

I nodded and steadied Holmes as he leaned over to dig into the drawer. It put his cock within a few inches of my mouth, and I wasn’t one to refuse such an invitation. My lips closed around the tip, and I used my tongue to ease back the foreskin. Holmes swore as he straightened back up, clutching a box of condoms and a pump bottle of lubricant to his chest. He stared down at me with wide eyes. I looked up at him in return, wondering what could have made him so surprised that I wanted to do this.

There was a faint wet pop when I let go, and I pushed myself off the mattress to sit once more. The springs creaked under the shifting weight. “When was the last time you did this sort of thing?” I asked.

Holmes’ lips moved silently, and I pushed my face against his chest to hide a grin when I realised that he was counting the days backward.

“Four weeks and two days,” he replied eventually.

“Gregson?”

He hugged the box tighter to his chest and nodded, mumbling something that might have been French.

I know there was no real reason for it, but I felt a pang of something close to jealousy. After seeing how he was treated by the man just during that afternoon, I couldn’t help wanting to protect him. At the very least, I could try to reassure him of his worth.

“C’mere, you.” I plucked the box and bottle out of his hands and set them down beside me. My fingers had lost some of their calluses in the last few months, but they were still a bit rough as I slid them up Holmes’ back and into his hair.

Vanilla teased my nose when I pressed it into the hollow of his throat. I picked Holmes up a few inches so I could reach under him and push my underwear out of the way. When I sat him back down, I positioned my cock between his thighs to lie flush against his.

“Bloody jock bastard,” Holmes muttered while looking down between us with an irritated scowl. “You’re the sort that wanders round a locker room starkers, aren’t you?” He had lost a bit of the control of his voice, and was dropping his Ts.

“I’m not usually this hard after playing a match.” I pointed out, but it was still a wonderful ego stroke.

Holmes reached down, closing his fingers around the thickest part of my cock, about halfway down. “Usually?” he smirked, dragging his hand up to the head. He gave his wrist a twist to coax out a gasp from me. “Let me know next time you go to the park for a game. I’ll come and watch, if this is the result, even on occasion.”

He clenched his thighs and rocked up and down on me while I broke into the box of condoms. “I have a bit of trouble in some positions.” I confessed, tearing a foil square off the pack. I held it up to the light to make sure I hadn’t broken the seal, and turned my attention back on Holmes. “Anything that involves my arms leaves me exhausted, and I’d probably just end up collapsing on you.”

“Is this comfortable for you? Or does it put too much pressure on your shoulder?” Holmes took the condom from me, and parted his thighs. I was fully hard, twitching slightly with my heartbeat. Going mostly by touch, Holmes rolled the condom on, using both hands to keep it secure. He swore softly under his breath and shuffled back on his knees to get a look at his handiwork.

“As long as you don’t use my shoulders like handlebars, I should be good.” I chuckled and rested a hand on the side of his head. My thumb caressed the corner of his eye before I carded my fingers back into his hair. “Turn around? I’ve got some work to do here, too.” He didn’t respond to me at first, so I moved my hand under his chin, tipping it up to help him focus. “I need to prepare you, _leannan_.” I explained gently. It took a bit of coaxing to help him to straighten up, and move into a new position.

As soon as Holmes turned to straddle my chest, facing away from me, it was obvious that he had known what he was coming up here for. He was scrubbed clean, and his arse felt like it had been massaged with lotion. “Cheeky little thing,” I grinned and tilted my head back to admire him.

Holmes rested his face on my leg and turned boneless against me when I used my spread fingers to hold him open. With a jolt and a shudder, he let out a high whine at the touch of my tongue. I dragged it from behind his bollocks up to his tailbone as I ran my hands over his back and sides.

“Do that again,” Holmes mumbled, turning to mouth at my leg. He reached back with one hand, tangling it into my hair to keep my attention on the cleft of his arse.

As much as I wanted to call out the men in his life that would leave him surprised at basic foreplay, I loved that I was making him react like this. That something so simple as my tongue on him could turn him into a melting mess on my chest. I reached between his legs to take his cock in hand, drawing it back. Still holding his cheeks parted, I took him back into my mouth.

It wasn’t difficult at all to take him in up to the base, even at that angle. I licked him firmly, following the line from the tip of his erection to his hole. Holmes was soft and clean there, and it didn’t take long for him to start to relax and open for me.

Fumbling around on the bed for the lubricant, I pumped some onto my fingers without looking up from my task. I rubbed it about to warm it before petting at his hole until I was able to press in.

By this point, Holmes was babbling something that I was certain was French, and clawing at the bedsheets. A few times, he bit down on my leg. Pushing back on my finger on instinct, it pressed his cock deeper into my mouth to nudge down the back of my throat. My eyes went wide, and I had to tilt my head back to breathe.

“Enough!” he shouted by the time I was sliding three fingers into him. I hadn’t even tried to find and torment his prostate. Holmes clambered off of me, panting for breath and leaving a thin trail of precome along my chest. His hair was wild from fisting it up in his own hands, and his lips were bruised from biting on them. He’d only taken my fingers, and he already looked well fucked.

“Much more of that, and you’re going to be very disappointed,” he murmured, his chest rising and falling heavily.

I sat up and beckoned him to get back onto my lap. “Not possible,” I chuckled, wrapping my arms around his slender waist to reach down. My cock was still stiff and full, Holmes’ reactions giving me enough stimulation that flagging wasn’t much of a worry. “Just take your time. I’m not going anywhere.” I held myself still for him, waiting patiently until he felt ready to give it a try.

Instead of gripping my shoulders, Holmes held onto my biceps, his fingernails dimpling the skin. He took in a few deep breaths to steady himself before spreading his thighs to lower himself down.

“Perfect,” I praised once the head was inside, and caressed at the small of his back. Our noses brushed together and I kissed his bottom lip. “You go at your pace. No rush.” I slicked my fingers with some more lube and rubbed them gently around his entrance to soothe any pain he might be feeling from the stretch.

Holmes stiffened, then shuddered against me. Before I had a chance to draw back and ask what was wrong, he dragged his nails down my arms. I felt his muscles flex and churn around the head of my cock, and a second later, thick ribbons of his come splashed onto my chest and stomach as he gave a wordless little cry.

Gathering him close, I cradled the back of Holmes’ head and kissed his throat. His pulse jumped under my lips, and his breathing came in ragged gasps. “I’m sorry,” he gasped and took his hands from my arms to press to his mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” he mumbled from behind his fingers.

“For what?” I laughed, a little out of breath myself. I dropped back to my elbows and slid my fingertips through the mess on my chest. Holding my hand in the light, I rubbed my thumb over my fingers then spread them apart, his come making thin lines between them. It was bitter when I flicked my tongue over my fingers and sucked them clean. “That was the best ego stroke yet.”

“I told you that you would be disappointed.”

He looked like he was waiting to be told off, and I immediately regretted my laugh. Reaching under him, I held the condom in place as I drew out and rolled him over onto his back. Pain in my shoulder be damned, I wanted to comfort him. “Does it seem like I’m disappointed here?” I rocked my hips down so he could feel my cock, still just as hard and eager as before.

“You didn’t come yet,” he pointed out with a hint of a pout.

I smirked and slipped my hand between us to find his hole. “Unless you need to stop here, we aren’t done yet.” I touched him gently to see how he would react, watching carefully for any signs of being too sensitive to go further. Holmes hummed happily and widened his legs for me, pressing up against my finger for more.

It was only possible for me to be above someone if I was on my knees. With a hand braced on the wall behind the bed, I knelt between Holmes’ thighs and helped him to tuck a pillow under his hips. He held his legs up and out of the way, his toes curling in the air.

I stretched him back out to be sure he could take the fullest part of me, grinding against his inner thigh as I played. This time, I angled my fingers to his prostate, stroking over it gently. Holmes’ head slammed back on his pillow and he growled, another spurt of thin, clear come coating his skin. I took my hand away rather than trying to test his rebound time. That could be an experiment for another day.

Holmes dug his heel into my hip to pull me closer. “That,” he panted, his teeth still bared, “was just unfair.” He let go of his leg so he could take me in hand, guiding it up between his arse cheeks in his impatience. “You’re going to wear me out when you get your degree, aren’t you?”

Bracing one hand on his inner thigh to keep his legs parted, I surged forward. He was relaxed and wrung out, and able to take me in one deep thrust. I snorted out a laugh through my nose, not trusting my voice to not shake.

“Quick, Holmes,” he dropped his voice into a deep mimic of my own, resting his feet on the curves of my hips for balance and lifting himself off the bed to meet my thrusts. “I’ve forgotten how to do a digital exam. Take off your jeans and bend over.”

I held his softening prick, feeling the come starting to dry thick and tacky on his skin. “As if you won’t ever try to test bruise patterns on my skin by sucking on me.” With my thumb I lifted his bollocks out off the way to keep them safe. Drawing back until the muscles clamped down around my head, I thrust back in to the base. When Holmes started to giggle, I knew I wouldn’t last much longer. It was such a sweet sound that bubbled through him and shivered down the length of my cock. I couldn’t think of a better sound to lead me into an orgasm.

Holmes set the pace for me, his eyes staying open and observing the entire time. He reached under his hips to hold my bollocks, rolling them between his fingers and thumb before he pressed just behind them. I cupped my hands under his rump to hold him clear off the bed, his entire weight supported on my hips and his shoulders.

It rolled through me slowly, beginning as a warm thrill low in my belly. Each time another wave of giggles erupted from Holmes, I hitched my breath and pushed in deeper. “Do you want me to pull out?” I whispered before I was too far gone. Holmes shook his head and moved his hand to my hip, his nails biting into the muscle to keep me in place as I tipped over the edge. The condom stretched to take my come, my cock swelling until Holmes clapped his free hand to his mouth. I could see his teeth biting into his palm, and pulled it away so I could hear him. I wanted to hear every gasp and moan he made for me. Even after the last lingering sensations started to taper off, I stayed inside of him for as long as possible.

Incoherent babbling was all I could get out of him, and I decided I would need to get a French to English dictionary at some point. With a deep groan, I held the base of the condom and pulled out. I leaned back to watch his body gape open for a moment before lazily fluttering closed.

“Stay here, I’ll go grab us something to clean up.”

Holmes flopped onto his side, stretching out his legs and making the most obscene noises. “I couldn’t go anywhere even if I wanted to,” he drawled then rolled over to burrow his face into one of the clean pillows.

I tossed the condom, and the tissues I scrubbed myself off with, before taking a look in the mirror. A few of the scratches Holmes had left on my arms had been deep enough to draw blood. I dabbed at them with some antiseptic but left them uncovered.

“Your accent deepens when you are having sex.” Holmes murmured when I came back into the bedroom with a damp flannel. He was sitting up against the headboard with a cigarette bobbing on his lips with my mobile in hand.

“You stop speaking English.” I countered. Holmes’ skin was unblemished save for a few fingerprint bruises on his hips and the inside of his thigh. Sitting cross legged on the bed, I wiped him down with the cloth then tossed it with the rest of our clothes on the floor.

We stretched out on our sides facing each other, an ashtray between us to share the cigarette. Holmes slid his foot up and down my shin under the blankets. “I could make a joke about caber tossing, but I don’t want to be kicked out of bed.”

My mobile chimed a text alert, and Holmes grabbed it before I could get a chance to reach for it. “You realise that’s mine, yes?”

“Mmhm, but I’m using it for the case.” he replied with a yawn. Holmes typed something in, then stubbed out the cigarette. “You’ll be interested to know that there has been a report on the murder already. It must have come from someone that was at the scene before we were. It doesn’t mention the ring at all, thankfully.”

I set the ashtray back on my side table and turned off the lamp. “Why’s that important?” I asked.

“I put this up on a few different sites.” Holmes turned the screen towards me so I could read a posting on a social networking page. “Found, on Brixton Road near Lauriston Gardens and the White Hart pub. Woman’s gold wedding band, inscribed inside. If you can identify the inscription, contact J. Watson for details.” The advert included my number.

“Sorry about using your name. There’s always a chance someone might recognise mine, and know that we’re onto their scent. As long as the mention of the ring stays out of the papers, we should be safe.” Holmes yawned again and tucked his head up under my chin.

I made sure the blankets were secure around him, and kissed his temple. “It’s fine, I barely use my phone as it is. But if we get someone answering, what will we do? It’s not like we can give them the ring, it’s been put into evidence by now.”

Holmes batted sleepily at my chest to get me to shut up. “Let me worry about that. We’ll deal with it in the morning.” His tone told me that he didn’t want to hear anything else, and he turned over to put his back to my chest. “Go to sleep. I’m not going to play you any lullabies this time.”

  


 

I woke alone the next morning, but there was a mug of coffee sitting on my side table, still steaming. After draining the mug, I dropped to the floor to do my usual routine of range of motion exercises. Over the past few months I had been getting more and more active, and my injuries were healing right along with me. I wouldn’t be dropping my left side for a running tackle any time soon, but I was able to do pushups without wanting to sob.

The last twenty-four hours had been a turning point for me, and I was grinning when I trotted downstairs, freshly showered, shaved, and dressed for the day.

Holmes was still in his pyjamas, pecking away at my phone. He was curled up in one of the chairs beside the fireplace, and when he saw me enter the room, he fumbled with the phone until it fell to the floor. “Good morning,” he mumbled, brushing some dust off the screen after he picked it back up.

“Thanks for the coffee.” I leaned over and kissed his head, and tries to smooth down the tangled mess I’d left of his hair. “You look like a mad scientist.”

“Well, _technically_ …”

When Mrs. Hudson brought up breakfast, she clucked her tongue at us both, and chided us for being up so late the night before. “I’ll need to have someone come in and see to the vents,” she muttered, stealing a slice of Holmes’ toast. “I shouldn’t have been able to hear you with that much detail. You should know better, John. Working yourself ragged like that.” The landlady shook her finger under my nose. “It’s a wonder you can even move this morning.”

Holmes froze with a piece of ham part way to his lips, and stared at Mrs. Hudson with a look of utter horror on his face. “Stop talking. Stop talking right now. Forever. Please. I will give you twenty quid to just stop talking.”

“I will settle for you doing the hoovering.” She put a fork in my hand and turned on her heel to head back downstairs.

“Don’t annoy her,” I chuckled, sitting across from Holmes to eat my breakfast. This was the earliest I had gotten up in weeks. “She’s the only one that knows how I like my eggs.” I washed the meal down with another cup of coffee and set the dishes aside to be dealt with later. “Any news on the case?”

“Yes, actually,” Holmes shot me a grateful look at taking him back to something he could discuss without turning different shades of scarlet. “I got a few dozen messages, most of them gags, a couple of them serious but incorrect. One, though, was able to to give me the correct inscription on the ring.” He wriggled in his chair. “This will be the first time I’ve directly spoken with a murderer.”

I pushed aside the feeling of alarm at how pleased he was by that - and how strangely adorable it made him look - and made myself comfortable. “What are we going to do about the ring? This might just be me, but I’d think that trying to trick a murderer might be somewhat on the bad side of an idea.”

Holmes dug into the cushion of his chair, then flicked something bright at me like he was tossing a coin.

I caught it in midair, to find that it was the ring we had found the morning before.

“No, I didn’t steal it from the crime scene.” Holmes answered my silent question. “While you were having your nap yesterday, I went and got it made up. Since it was so plain, it wasn’t difficult. Unless our killer has a photographic memory, it will suit for our purposes.”

Turning the ring over my fingers, I whistled. Granted, I had only seen it for a moment, but everything about this looked the same, down to the scrapes and scratches around the outsides. “Would he really risk getting caught, just for this, though? It’s just a beat up old band.” I handed the ring back to Holmes, who slipped it onto his finger for safekeeping.

“He will. I have no doubt that he will. If I’m reading him correctly, he will risk everything for the ring.” Holmes turned the band over and over on his finger as he spoke. “It must have fallen when he was bent over Drebber, possibly off of a chain because this would never fit the fingers of the man we’re looking for. He didn’t notice it was missing until he had left the flat. Our man came back for it immediately after realising it was missing. Time of death matches up. Which means he probably reached for it out of habit and comfort, and found that it was gone.

“Since the reports of the crime made no mention of the ring, but did mention the jewellery that Drebber was wearing, it would be reasonable for him to think that he might have lost it somewhere outside of the flat. It would be a long shot, looking for found item adverts, but he must have felt desperate. Probably would have been looking at sale postings as well. Last night, I got a message from an unlisted number, giving me the description of the ring. We sent a few messages back and forth this morning, and arranged for a meeting here. In an hour, actually. You wouldn’t mind seeing him, would you?”

“Mind? Having a meeting with someone that can kill without leaving a mark on the body?”

“Yes, precisely,”

I blew out a sigh and dragged my fingers back through my hair. “I should go change my shirt, then.”

While I was upstairs, I carefully field stripped and cleaned the Glock, which I technically shouldn’t have still owned. I put three bullets in the magazine then reassembled the entire piece. “What do we do if he’s violent?” I asked on my way back downstairs. I hid the gun in the holster at the small of my back, and pulled my shirt down to cover it.

“He’ll be desperate, but I don’t know if he’ll be violent.” Holmes had taken the dishes downstairs, and changed out of his pyjamas. He was fastening a belt around his slender hips, and I allowed myself a few seconds to just drink in the sight of him. If we were going to soon be playing host to a murderer, I wouldn’t mind having the image of him in such a snug pair of black jeans with me.

“You’re staring. I can feel it.” Holmes said over his shoulder before pulling on a dark red shirt with a black hood and sleeves. He rolled the sleeves up to the elbow and ran his fingers through his hair a few times in an obvious attempt to settle his nerves.

Crossing over to the sofa, Holmes patted it in invitation. “I got a reply from my email to the States. It seems like my theories are correct.”

“Mm? And what theories are those? You’ve got a fair number of them.” I reminded him as I sat down.

Holmes touched the pistol at my back for reassurance and brushed aside the question. Instead, he leaned over my lap and produced another piece of jewellery from his pocket. “I got this when I was having the ring engraved.” he murmured, turning the silver pendant to make it catch the light. “It was in the pawn window, and caught my eye.” With his head on the arm of the sofa, dangling the pendant over his head, he looked like a curious cat. He was beaming with such pride at his purchase that it took him a moment to realise that I was grinning down at him. “Ah, it’s just something to add to my collection.”

“It will look good on you.” I took the chain from his grip and slipped it over his head. He was so easy to please.

“I…” Holmes sat up and coughed into his fist. He jumped up from the sofa when we both heard a knock at the door. “That will be him.” He stood and smoothed out his shirt and scrubbed his hands on his jeans.

“I’m looking for Mr. Watson.” Came a voice from downstairs.  I could hear Mrs. Hudson’s quiet reply as she told the visitor that I was at the top of the stairs.

Holmes positioned me in the middle of the room and went to stand off to the side near the fireplace. He fumbled with the wedding band for a moment, struggling to pull it off his finger. It was clear that he was far more nervous than he was truly letting on.

When the step on our stair was light, Holmes looked up in surprise and thrust the ring at me.

Rather than a robust man of more than six foot, a dainty old woman stepped into the living room. She looked between us before turning to me. “Mr. Watson? Your landlady said you were shorter of the two of you.” She clasped her fingers together in front of her, twisting them together for a moment before digging into her handbag. She produced a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. It was a copy of the advert Holmes had placed online. “I’m Annabelle Sawyer, and I’m here about the ring. My baby girl… She lost it. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken it off her finger to begin with, but with her husband out of town, and being such a mean drunk when he’s home, I don’t rightly blame her for wanting to take it off once in a while. But her husband’s going to be home, day after tomorrow. I can’t stand the thought of how angry he would be to find she’s lost it. Now, I’ll be having a word with her, but my baby’s been so wrung out over this, I just want to get her ring back. The poor duck was at the White Hart last night with… Well, it doesn’t matter just _who_ she was with, let’s just say she shouldn’t have been with him.”

I reached out to place a hand on her arm, but she stepped back out of my grip. Her voice broke slightly and she shook her head. “Did someone come and buy it already?”

There was such a note of sorrow in her tone, that I produced the ring immediately and held it out in my palm. “Is this her ring, Ma’am?”

She clapped her hands to her mouth to muffle a cry of joy then clutched at the sleeve of my shirt. “Oh, you wonderful boy, it is! You’ve saved my baby all kinds of trouble.”

I placed the ring in her hand after Holmes gestured to me. He was chewing on his fingernails with a curious look on his face. “What is your daughter’s name?” he asked with a slight frown.

Mrs. Sawyer took the ring, brushing her fingers over it before slipping it into one of the many pockets of her handbag. “Dennis,” she replied, taking out a little purse. “Sally Dennis. She married Tom after just a few weeks, and I’ve been trying to get her to divorce him, but she thinks it’s love. And as long as he’s sober and not off running around with other girls, maybe it is. But I told my baby, no man ought to treat his dog the way he treats her, let alone his wife.” As she spoke, she counted out some bills and tried to press them into my hand.

“No, no. Don’t worry yourself.” Holmes crossed the room and took the money out of my hand. He had to forcibly pry my fingers back, as it had been months since I held that much cash at any one time. “We don’t need a reward. We were happy to help, weren’t we?”

Just barely managing to stop a sigh of defeat, I nodded and returned the money and plastered a reassuring smile on my face. “He’s right. We didn’t do anything special. Just picked it up off the ground.”

Tears sprang to her already red-rimmed eyes and she shook my hand. She pulled a soiled hankie from inside her handbag and brought it to her eyes as she backed from the room, thanking us both profusely before I shut the door behind her.

The moment the door closed, Holmes ran on his toes into his bedroom, emerging a moment later wearing a pair of beat up old trainers. “Has she gotten into a cab yet?” he asked, hopping on one foot and then the other to lace the shoes.

I took a peek out the window and shook my head. “No, she’s still down on the pavement.” Mrs. Sawyer began to turn to glance back up at the flat, so I ducked out of the window. “Why? What’s the matter?”

Holmes pulled his hood up over his head and grabbed a cardigan from the back of my chair. “She’s lying. She is involved with the murder, or at the very least, knows the killer.” He snatched up his keys and darted out the door, calling over his shoulder that I shouldn’t wait up for him.

Before I even had a chance to put on a pair of shoes to try to go after him, I saw through the window that the old woman had gotten into a cab. Holmes tried to grab a second cab, but it drove off as reached for the handle. I watched as he ran down the street to the corner, colliding with a car. For a moment, I lost sight of him until he rolled and hopped back up and darted out of view around a corner.

For an hour, I paced the living room, chain smoking to try to settle my nerves. They did nothing but make me more frustrated, so I set about tidying the living room. Another hour passed, then a third, and I was downstairs in Mrs. Hudson’s flat with a pile of clean dishes drying beside me, and the oven door open while I scoured the inside.

It was after twelve when I heard a key in the front door, and I moved to get up too quickly, slamming the back of my head into the top of the oven.

“Watson, you’re covered in soot. What _have_ you been doing with--”

Holmes cut off the sentence with a squeak as I grabbed him up and pushed him against the wall. After looking him over carefully for bumps or scrapes, I tangled my fingers into his hair and kissed him deeply. “If you are going to go haring off out of the flat after a suspect, bring your damned phone with you next time!” I bit out after pulling away.

“You were worried about me,” he murmured after I let him back down. His head was tilted to the side, and I realised that the concept was completely foreign to him. “I apologise.”

“Yes, I was worried.” I sighed and led him back upstairs where I scrubbed my hands and arms clean and tossed my greasy shirt into the laundry hamper. “What happened?”

Ducking his head, Holmes rubbed his hand over the side of his neck. “You must promise not to tell anyone at the Yard.” he muttered after a moment. “I was a complete idiot. Give me a bit, and I’ll be able to laugh at it, but right now, if any of them found out, I’d never hear the end of it.” Holmes flopped down on the sofa and accepted the cup of coffee I gave him. He took a deep slurp and snuggled into the cushions. “I had my cab tail the other for nearly twenty minutes, then they turned a corner. I lost them for less than a _minute_ before I recognised the cab number. When the driver in front of us finally pulled off to the side, I jumped out to stop him before he picked up another fare.” He held up his hands in an obvious play for sympathy. They were scraped raw, still with bits of grit in the worst of the cuts just above the wrist.

“For god’s sake, what did you do?” I demanded and went to fetch some antiseptic and gauze. I cleaned the cuts, using a pair of fresh tweezers to get out the gravel.

“I told you,” he replied, wincing from time to time as I taped the gauze down. “I jumped out of the cab.” Holmes took his hands away and mimed doing a tuck and roll. “I didn’t land as gracefully as I had hoped. There - ah - there was an unexpected pothole, and I didn’t take into account the driver not braking completely.”

“How did you stay in one piece before I came along?” I muttered in exasperation. I took his hands back in my own and pushed his sleeves up the rest of the way to check him over for anymore damage. “What did she have to say for herself when you opened the door?”

“There was no one in the damned cab!”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You can’t be serious. Holmes, she could barely make it down the stairs. There’s no way that old woman would be able to jump out of a cab and disappear down the street, all in a few seconds.”

“No, a feeble old woman wouldn’t.” Holmes agreed. He put his mug down and reached into the pocket of the cardigan, producing some silvery stuff. Tossing it on the table, he gestured to it with disgust. “Old woman, my arse.” he harrumphed.

I picked the item up and turned it over in my hand until I recognised it as a wig.

“It was in the backseat, along with a padded jumper and an empty handbag. The cabbie told me a young ginger bloke paid for the ride.” Holmes dragged his fingers back through his hair, tugging on the ends in annoyance. “If I ever get my hands on him, I’m going to need to ask him for pointers. I’ve never seen such good makeup outside of a film. Even when I did stage work, we never got into such excellent details. I was taken in for a moment.”

I dropped the wig on the coffee table and moved around it to sit on the sofa. Holmes leaned against me and continued to grumble under his breath. “But only for a moment. You obviously saw through the disguise, to chase after him.” I said in a soothing tone, hoping to comfort him. It must have been a long time since he had embarrassed himself like this.

He snorted and shook his head, wiping at his nose with the back of his wrist. “L,” he muttered. “It wasn’t the disguise that I saw through, it was the lie. The fake daughter’s name was Sally.”

“And the inscription on the inside of the ring was for L.D.” I finished and swore. “I can’t believe I didn’t catch that.”

“Such a little thing. And you were distracted by nearly two thousand pounds in cash being waved in front of you.” he pointed out and shifted and squirmed until he was sitting on my knee. “Now, you smell like a deep fryer. Go and have a bath, and I’ll see about getting us some lunch.” Holmes squeezed my face and kissed my lips before getting up to find his phone.

I sniffed my arm to find that he was right, so I went to take his advice while he called to place an order for pizza.


	6. Tobias Gregson Shows What He Can Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holmes enlists the help of the Baker Street Division of the police force, while Tobias Gregson shows off, and Watson tries to get used to a continuous stream of strangers through his new home.

By the time I got out of the bath, Holmes had already paid for a stack of pizzas and garlic bread.

“Do you really expect to be able to eat all that?” I asked, brows raised. I scrubbed my hair dry with my towel, then tossed it over the arm of one of the chairs.

Holmes served up a couple of slices for me and nibbled on a piece of the garlic bread before handing me his phone. “I thought you’d like to see what the papers have to say about the murder,” he said instead of answering my question.

Most of the articles held some sort of attempt at political commentary in relation to the murder. It was blamed on everything from lack of funding for social programmes to immigration problems.

There were a few lines on what Drebber had done the night he was murdered, which had been new information to me. It appeared that he had been living in a guesthouse, sharing his rooms with Joseph Stangerson, and had told the landlady that they would be heading to Liverpool that night.

Only a few of them discussed the victim’s background, but all of them went on with fawning descriptions of both Lestrade and Gregson.

“‘Despite his French background, DI Gilles Lestrade has made a swift advancement through the ranks of NSY. He is best known to our readers for his tireless efforts involved with the Hyde Park Muggers, and removing that blight from our fair city.’”

I remembered the case from when I first returned to London, but couldn’t recall any talk of who had arrested him. But then, I steered clear of tabloid journalism as best I could.

“‘Through Detective Inspector Tobias Gregson’s hard work and determination, it is obvious that this heinous crime will be brought to a swift and speedy resolution.’” I rolled my eyes and handed the phone back to Holmes. “Not a word about you.”

“There won’t be. No matter what happens, the press have their poster boys. Tobi is big, gorgeous, and photographs well. Lestrade might be a little weasel of a man, but he does excellent interviews, knows how to deal with the public, and already has his name linked to several high profile cases.” Holmes shrugged and flexed his fingers. “ _Imbéciles aiment l'un des leurs _ _._ ”

Before I could reply, I heard a shout from downstairs, followed by a thundering stampede on the steps. “What the blue fuck?”

“Language, Watson,”

The stampede turned into half a dozen excited children that ran into the living room.

“Company, fall in!” Holmes called sharply, clapping his hands together like a school marm. “Order in the ranks!”

My brows shot up, and I pressed the backs of my fingers to my lips to smother a laugh.

The kids, who ranged in age from eight to about thirteen, all scrambled to stand in a line at attention. They saluted Holmes before giving up their attempts, and began poking and jostling each other while giggling.

“Walter Arthur Wiggins, you shouldn’t have brought them all with you.” Holmes chided. He crouched in front of the youngest and tipped his head up to the light so he could scrub a smudge off of his cheek.

The oldest boy straightened his chin and clasped his hands behind his back, blushing red. His voice broke and cracked as he spoke. “I’m sorry, Sherlock. Giselle’s parents weren’t home, and I couldn’t just let her stay there alone. And you know what Donnie’s dad’s like when he got a mood on. If I was gonna bring them, I figured, I may as well bring them all.”

Sighing softly, Holmes nodded and stood up from the floor. “Right, of course. You couldn’t leave them alone.” He waved his hands at the coffee table, and the collection of pizzas made sense. “Eat up, I’ll get drinks. Who wants strawberry, and who wants orange?”

Six voices all began to reply at once, and Holmes poured everyone watered down cups of Ribena.

Shy fingers plucked at my sleeve to get my attention, and I looked down to the nervous face. “Can you pin my hair?” the boy asked in a voice made rough from practice. “Mr. Sherlock usually does it, but he has pizza sauce on his hands.” He tugged off a pale grey tam, revealing long blond locks that were in a messy pile on his head.

“I’ll do my best... Donnie?” I took a few pins, and turned him around so I could twist the hair up into a bun.

“Uh huh,” he nodded, making me have to start over. “But sometimes I’m Anna, too.”

I pinned the bun in place, humming as I listened to the explanation. “Like how Mr. Sherlock is sometimes Sherlock, or sometimes Holmes?” I asked. With the tam back on, I secured it with the last pin and made sure that all of the blond hair was covered.

Donnie looked up at me with enormous eyes and yanked on my shirt sleeve again. “Yes! That’s exactly it!” Taking up one of the cushions, he threw it across the room at the oldest boy. “See, Walt? It’s not grown ups that are stupid, it’s just Dad.”

“Names are easy. Applied physics? Now that is hard.” I took one of the plates that Holmes brought out for the pizza and dished up a couple of slices for the kid.

He wrinkled his nose at me and took a bite. “You’re weird, just like Mr. Sherlock is. But, like, it’s a good weird, I guess.”

“Hear that, Holmes? We’re weird.” I glanced up, to see Holmes on the other side of the room, holding a handful of paper napkins to his chest in a tight grip. The look in his shining eyes made me feel like I could climb a damned mountain for him.

“Yes,” he murmured, shaking himself out of his reverie to hand each of the kids a few napkins. “Good weird, at that.”

When everyone had eaten and were sitting in a half circle on the floor around Holmes, my friend sat down in his chair with his hands steepled under his chin. “Were you able to find any of the information I needed?”

Wiggins shook his head and plucked at the fraying cuff of his jeans. “No, Sir. But we’ve been looking since you called me this morning.”

“I didn’t think you would have been able to by now, but it was worth a try.” With a devious grin in my direction, Holmes stood back up from his seat. “Now, lads - apologies, and lady,” He bowed from the waist to the little girl who must have been Giselle. “My friend Lance Corporal Watson here was an actual soldier. Why don’t you ask him questions while I go and get your pay?”

Before the words were out of his mouth, the children all clamoured around the table to reach me. Over the next fifteen minutes, I answered the rapid fire questions they shot at me. Did I have to go to school to learn to be a soldier? Did I get to boss people around? How long was I there? I tried to answer the questions as best as I could while I waited for Holmes to come back from his bedroom.

“Yes, I got to boss a few people around. But I also had to follow a lot of orders, too. I was there almost six years.” I was saved from having to explain the circumstances of my return when Holmes returned, counting out some bills.

Each of the children was given three five pound notes and a parcel of wrapped pizza slices, with a promise of more when they came back with proper information. Holmes walked them downstairs and saluted them each in turn, giving them stern warnings to be safe and stay together.

Holmes tossed the stray cushion at me when he came back into the living room and climbed over the arm of the sofa to sprawl out. He put his feet in my lap and wiggled his toes expectantly until I sighed and began to massage them. “Those little buggers can go unnoticed through most of the city. I’ve gotten better work out of them than I have from most anyone from the official police force.”

He groaned quietly when I rubbed my thumbs over his Achilles tendon. There were red marks around his ankle, looking to be the scars of a bite of some sort.

“I met Walter Wiggins last year, and he introduced me to the rest of my little team.”

“Donnie’s father?”

“All of them have their reasons for not wanting to be home. Being my eyes on the street gives them that chance, and puts some money in their pockets.” With a sad smile, Holmes rubbed his fingers over the bridge of his nose. “I see a lot of myself in them.”

I lifted Holmes’ foot and pressed a kiss to one of the scars. “Are they working this Brixton case, then?”

“Yes, I have a theory, and they’re testing it for me.” Holmes’ eyes shot wide and he lifted his hips off the sofa to dig into his pocket. He took out his phone to check the incoming message with a cringe. “Tobi is going to be here soon.” Rolling over, he oozed off the sofa and trotted into his bedroom.

By the time the bell rang, Holmes had come back out with his lip ring back in place and his hair slicked back off his forehead. “He’s clearly got some big news.” he snorted when we heard Gregson take the stairs up two at a time.

“Sherlock!” The DI was grinning from ear to ear when he burst into our living room. He grabbed Holmes by the cheeks and kissed him deeply, turning him in a half circle. “Congratulate me! I’ve figured it all out.” Holmes was stiff, his hands clenched at his sides. Gregson leaned in for another kiss until he noticed that I was in the room. “Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t see you there…?”

Holmes wrinkled his nose in distaste and put himself back at my side. “This is John Watson, remember? He was helping me at the crime scene yesterday.” He ducked his head and tugged at the hem of his shirt. I could feel him trembling against my side.

“Right, yeah. Of course. How are you, John?” He held out his hand, which I shook once and dropped.

“Pleasantly tired,” I replied flatly. I could see Holmes bite his lip out of the corner of my eye.

My answer only gave him a few seconds pause before he tried to bring the topic back around to his apparent genius. “I’ve got it all but solved.”

For a moment, Holmes looked anxious. Resting my hand on his back, I rubbed him through his shirt with my thumb. “You mean you’ve been put on the right track?” he asked, twitching his brows together.

“Track? ‘Lock, I’ve got the bastard in custody.”

“You can’t be serious. Who is he?”

Gregson’s chest puffed out with pride. “He’s a naval lieutenant, Arthur Charpentier.”

Holmes sagged against me as he gave a relieved sigh. “Sit down, Tobi.” he offered him one of my cigarettes which he accepted without thanks. “We’ve got a few slices of pizza left over if you’re hungry.”

“Starved,” He leaned over to let Holmes light the cigarette before digging into one of the boxes. “I’ve been run off my feet since this whole thing starting. And it’s been a lot of brain work, too.” Gregson saluted with his pizza crust to Holmes. “You’d understand. Right up your alley. We’re one in the same with this sort of thing.”

“Oh, you flatter me. Stop. Really. I’m going to blush.” Holmes batted his fingers in front of his face. “Why don’t you tell me how you’ve been putting that mind of yours to work?”

By this point, Gregson had nearly doubled over in his amusement, too absorbed with himself to catch the sarcasm in Holmes’ voice. “The best part,” he said when he came back up for air. “Is that that damn fool Lestrade is off sniffing in the wrong places.”

His peals of laughter nearly choked him, and I was debating whether or not I should reach over to clap him on the back, or let him get through it on his own. I was moderately certain that if he started to asphyxiate, that I would step in. Beside me, Holmes had begun cleaning his cuticles and whispering under his breath about needing to clip his nails. “Oh? And where has he gone?”

“He’s trying to track down the other man. The one from the bills. Stangerson. Which is daft. But, he’s probably got his hands on him already. Hopefully feeling like a right fool because of it.”

After buffing his nails on his jeans, Holmes looked up at the flushed face across from us. “Hopefully, of course. Where did you get the idea to go after this naval officer?”

Gregson shifted from side to side in his chair and wiped his hands together to brush the crumbs off. “Simple, really. Ah… John, do you want to step out? This needs to be kept in confidence. An active investigation, after all.”

I crossed my legs and hooked my hands over my knee, making no move to get up. “Oh, I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that. I’ve been involved with this investigation since I read your letter yesterday.” I tilted my head to the side and quirked an eyebrow up.

Between one breath and the next, Gregson sobered and straightened in his seat. “Right, yes. Never mind. Just… keep this all between us.”

“Naturally,” I inclined my head after a few seconds, waiting just long enough to make my point. I was used to taking orders, but obeying them still didn’t come naturally to me, particularly when they were given by men like him.

“Anyway,” Gregson gave a sharp shake of his head to get himself back on track. “We got a few dozen calls with tips since we issued the press release yesterday afternoon. Most of them were duds, of course. I was getting tired of waiting around for a good tip to come in, so I decided to take to my heels. You remember the suit?”

Holmes’ eyes drifted nearly closed and his face took on a vacant expression. “A single-breasted three button with side vents, in deep charcoal with lighter grey pinstriping.” He opened his eyes again. “Made at Sabiro, on Camberwell Road.”

“You went there already?”

“No, of course not. Why would I?”

Gregson smirked at me quickly before looking back to Holmes. “I’m surprised at you, Sherlock. I’ve never known you to pass up on such an obvious lead. If you’d followed up with the designer, you would have been able to say that you had this case solved before us. When I went to the shop, I got the victim’s address. He’d been staying at the Charpentier Family Guesthouse.”

“Very clever,” Holmes tapped his fingers against the palm of his hand.

At the praise, Gregson launched into the rest of his tale. “I went right round to the guesthouse and found the owner was pale and nervous. Her daughter - God, she was gorgeous - was in the same state as her mother, except she looked like she had been crying right before I got there. So, right off, I knew that I was in the right place. I love that feeling, ‘Lock. You know? The one where you just know that everything is starting to fit into place.

“I decided to go with the direct route, and asked right off if they had heard about the murder. The mother nodded silently, but the daughter broke down. Started crying.” He reached into the inner pocket of his coat to take out his notepad, flipping through to consult his scribblings. “Right, so I asked them what time they last saw Drebber. Even though she was crying, it was the daughter that answered. Seems he and his friend Stangerson had gone for a nine o’clock train at just after eight.”

Holmes squeezed my knee, and I took out my phone to check train schedules. There had been a train leaving Paddington at nine, heading to Heathrow airport. With their cruise tickets, it was easy to guess that they had been planning on leaving the country the night before. I passed my phone to Holmes so he could see, and he hummed in reply before giving it back.

Seeming to be oblivious to us, Gregson butted out his cigarette and snatched up another slice of pizza. “I asked if that was the last they had seen of either of them. The mother turned near purple, and I could see she was biting down on the insides of her cheeks. It took a while, but she finally nodded and said that it was. While I was writing everything down, the ladies were silent until the daughter spoke up in this soft little voice. ‘Lying won’t do anyone any good.’ she said.

“She told me that they had actually seen Drebber again after they left. As soon as the words left her mouth, her mother buried her face in her hands and started to sob that the girl had condemned her brother.”

I opened up a document on my phone to take notes from Gregson’s story. The young woman had insisted that her brother would want the truth told. The DI had tried to convince them that he had known the full story anyway, to get the rest of it out of them. Mother and daughter must have been frightened of the possibility of putting their family in danger, because they had believed the lie. Between the two of them, the story unfolded.

They both were adamant that Arthur had been completely innocent of the murder, but that they were glad it had happened.

Drebber had been lodging with them for less than a month, sharing a set of rooms with a man he had introduced as his assistant. He and Stangerson kept erratic hours, and other tenants in the building had complained about their music or drinking at least once a day.

The night of the murder, the daughter, Alice Charpentier had been in the front room working on an assignment for her life drawing class. In just the few short weeks that Drebber had been rooming with them, the complaints against him had moved from just noise, to his inappropriate behaviour towards the women who cleaned the rooms during the day. Up until that point, he had only made crude remarks or jokes to Miss Charpentier which she pretended not to understand.

An hour after leaving the guesthouse with Stangerson, Drebber returned alone, and drunk to the point of weaving where he stood. Finding Miss Charpentier sitting behind her easel, he had walked up to her and grabbed her by the arm. She managed to call out before he started to kiss her. Drebber slurred out some attempt at a proposition, asking her to come away with him when he left.

After hearing his sister’s call for help, Arthur came down from his room to find the young woman crying and trying to pull herself out of Drebber’s grip. Arthur dragged him out of the room and down the front steps of the building. The women didn’t see what had happened, but Arthur came back in shortly after to tell them that he was going to make sure Drebber didn’t come back.

“They heard about the murder this morning.” Gregson snapped his notepad shut and tucked it into his pocket again.

“Do you think I should just let them grow out a bit?” Holmes held his fingers out to me, flexing them.

“I’d rather you didn’t.” I held him by the wrist to examine his nails. They were blunt and strong, and would be quite painful if they grew out.

“Mm, yes, I see your point. I just have this terrible habit of biting them.”

The freckles on Gregson’s face stood out sharply as the colour drained from his cheeks. “Christ’s sake, Sherlock. Have you been paying attention to me at all?”

“Not in the least,” Holmes shrugged. “Fine, what happened next?”

Lips pursed, Gregson folded his arms over his chest. “Mrs. Charpentier told me that she and her daughter had both gone to bed before her son returned. He was there in the morning, but didn’t know what time he had come in during the night. I took two officers and went to find him at the gym where he was working out. I didn’t even get to telling him why we were there, when he said ‘I guess you’re here to arrest me for that bastard’s death?’ Well, it might as well have been an outright confession right there.”

“Yes, clearly,” Holmes rocked back and forth to get his feet tucked under himself and folded his hands under his chin. “And how do you suppose he killed the man, without leaving a mark on the body?”

“When we found him in the gym, he was boxing. Wearing those padded gloves. He could’ve hit him in the stomach, causing an internal rupture. I’ve seen it happen before. The blood, and the writing on the wall, all of that must’ve been a blind to throw us off.”

Holmes applauded with a grin. “You’re doing very well, Tobi. I’ll make a successful detective out of you, yet.”

“I think I was pretty successful.” Gregson linked his fingers and stretched his arms over his head until his knuckles cracked. “The man volunteered a statement, but it was flimsy. He said he followed Drebber for a few blocks until he got found out. Drebber hopped into a cab. Instead of going home, Mr. Charpentier said he went to see a friend he’d served with and went for a long walk with him until after midnight.”

“Where’s the friend, to corroborate the story?” Holmes asked.

“That’s where it gets most flimsy, ‘Lock. When I asked him, he just sort of stammered, and wasn’t able to give his address.”

I snorted and rolled my eyes, earning a sour look from Gregson. “Yes, because two military men that go on ‘long walks’ together would be so forthcoming about their whereabouts.”

“Be that as it may,” Gregson snapped. “Everything else fits together so smoothly, I’m sure that finding his mate would just seal the rest of the case together. I almost feel bad for Lestrade. He’s gone off on his own hunches, and is going to feel like a right jackass when he finds out I’ve got this tidied up.”

We found out soon enough, how Lestrade would react. After finishing another three of my cigarettes, Gregson finally stood up from the chair and got ready to leave. I opened the door to let him out, only to find DI Lestrade on the other side, hand raised to knock on it.

“Jesus, you just jump out there, don’t you?” he muttered and yanked his scarf off as he came inside, brushing past us to find Holmes. “Good, you’re home.”

“Of course,” I sighed and shut the door again. “Please, come in. Make yourself at home. Why don’t I make drinks? Oh, I know, I’ll roast a turkey.”

Lestrade’s usual cool and friendly demeanor had vanished completely. Holmes ushered him into one of the chairs and plied him with a cup of tea while asking him what had happened to make him look so dour.

He drained the cup and scrubbed his hands over his ratty little face. “It’s Stangerson. I tracked him down to his hotel near Paddington station.”

“Ha, you see?” Gregson crowed and swatted Holmes on the shoulder. “I told you he wasn’t involved.”

Narrowing his eyes on Gregson, Lestrade accepted another cup of tea. “At about six this morning, Joseph Stangerson was murdered in his hotel room.”


	7. Light in the Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lestrade throws Gregson's theories out the window, Holmes celebrates the final piece in his puzzle, and the group finally meets the murderer face to face.

Lestrade’s news left the three of us speechless for a moment. Gregson reacted first, letting out a stream of curses and pacing in place. I ignored him and stared at Holmes who was frowning deeply. His brows drew into a vee over his eyes.

“I wasn’t expecting this.” he murmured.

“Neither was I.” Lestrade sipped his new cup of tea more slowly, blowing on it before cradling it in his lap. “Looks like you three are thick as thieves in here. Is it about the case?”

Still pacing around in front of the hearth, Gregson dragged his hands down his face. “Are you sure, really sure that it was Stangerson? And that he was dead?”

“If he wasn’t dead, he seemed awful comfortable being stuffed in that body bag.” Lestrade snorted. “I found the body. I’m not used to that. Coming to a scene knowing there’s going to be a body there is one thing, but I’ve never stumbled over a body like that.”

“We were just listening to what Gregson’s done so far.” Holmes explained. “Why don’t you catch your breath, and tell us what happened?” While he was talking, I took up Lestrade’s wrist and checked his heart rate. It didn’t seem to be a sign of shock, but Lestrade was obviously shaken up.

He shot me a grateful look when I poured him a shot of whiskey into his cup. If these visits were going to keep up, I was going to need to replenish my supply soon.

Lestrade nursed his drink as he spoke, savouring each sip. “Right, I might as well say this right now. I did think that Stangerson was involved in Drebber’s murder. That’s what I went to talk to him about. I was fully prepared to arrest him this morning. I started from the train station, and worked my way back from there. They were there together last night, before the murder.”

“Yeah,” Gregson put in. “I found that out myself yesterday. They were together before that, too. Shared rooms, and all.”

Holmes bit down on the ring in his lip, making a loud clacking sound. “You’ve had your chance to speak, let Lestrade give us the details of what he has learned. Going round in circles isn’t going to do any of us any good.”

“You know,” I trailed my fingertips down the back of Holmes’ neck as I sat down beside him on the sofa. “If this detective thing doesn’t work out, you’ve got one hell of a career opportunity out there as a nanny.”

He smacked me in the hip with the back of a hand, but hid a smirk. “Quiet, you. Lestrade, go on. But you can skim over the details of Drebber’s night. We have most of it confirmed.”

While Holmes and I had been dancing, Lestrade had been out knocking on doors and making his inquiries to try to track down Drebber’s companion. After finding out that they had been separated, he had focused his attentions on hotels out near Heathrow.

“Wouldn’t it have made more sense for them to have a meeting place set close to where they were living?” Holmes asked.

“Yeah, well, I figured that out this morning.” Lestrade scowled into his cup, his frustration colouring his sallow face an unhealthy shade of orange. “I went back down to Paddington, and found him in the second hotel I went to.”

Stangerson had checked himself into the hotel late the night before, and had raised a small fuss in the lobby before taking himself to his room. He left strict instructions that he be called if someone matching Drebber’s description arrived, and put in a request for a daily wake-up call at nine in the morning.

It had taken some convincing, and three different employees looking at Lestrade’s badge before they had let him go up to Stangerson’s room to interview him.

“I had to make sure they didn’t call up to his room. I wanted to catch him by surprise, and see if maybe I could startle some sort of confession out of him.” Lestrade got up from his chair and paced back and forth in front of the coffee table. “When I got up to his door, there was a shadow under it, and something spreading out to darken the carpet in the hallway.” With a shrill sound in the back of his throat, he lifted his shoe to point at the toe. “I stepped in his blood!”

Even more than the announcement that Stangerson was dead in the first place didn’t cause as much of a stir as that last statement. We had expected to learn that he had been killed the same way as his friend, through some unknown poison.

“I cried out - erm, called out, and it brought the commissionaire running up the stairs. We opened the door, and I was almost sick. There was blood everywhere. Not like with the crime scene the other day, where it was just drops and splashes. There was honest-to-god puddles and pools of blood, and it looked like Stangerson had dragged himself through it.” Lestrade blanched at the memory before swallowing thickly so he could continue. “He’d been dead for a while. The muscles in his hands and arms were still stiff, but his legs were loose. The thin streaks of blood and the droplets were dried, and the puddles were tacky around the edges. Cause of death was obviously the deep stab wound to his left side. I haven’t received a coroner’s report to confirm, but odds are high that the puncture had struck his heart.” It sounded like Lestrade was reciting this by rote, to help distance himself from the grisly images that were obviously still behind his eyes. “And on the far wall, seen first thing when we stepped in the room-”

Holmes’ hand stole into mine, linking our fingers together to squeeze. “The word **RACHE** was written out in his blood.” he finished, and I could feel him shudder beside me, even while a sickly thrill went down my spine.

Lestrade tapped the side of his nose and nodded. “And the kewpie doll goes to…” He tossed back the final dregs of his tea. “I compared it to the photos from the other scene, and it was a near exact match.”

I don’t know if it was battle sharpened nerves, but it was becoming more and more obvious to me that these weren’t murders in the sense I was used to reading about in my crime novels, or watching on television. These two men had been executed. It seemed to me that to find their killer, it might be to our benefit to find out just what it was they had done to earn their death sentences.

“The worst damn thing, is that the killer was seen.” Lestrade sighed. “Some kid was delivering takeaway menus in the neighbourhood early in the morning, and saw a man heading down the fire escape.”

“Tall,” Holmes filled in for him. “With a reddish face.”

“He was so calm and cool about it, leaving the room without a care, that the kid assumed he was a contractor or something, supposed to be there.” With his lips puckered out in irritation,  Lestrade sifted through one of the pizza boxes for a slice. He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin, then folded and pleated it, twisting it around his fingers. “He had to have been in the room for a while after he killed the man, because he was clean when he left. There was blood in the drain of the sink, and dirty water on the floor. He had even cleaned his knife off on the bedsheets.”

Despite the confirmation that his theory about the killer had been proven yet again, Holmes didn’t seem the least bit satisfied at the description of him from the witness. “Did he leave behind any clue, or evidence of who he is?” he asked quietly.

“It’s still being processed. He didn’t take anything out of the room. Stangerson’s wallet, and his luggage were untouched. His mobile wasn’t locked, and I took a look at his text messages. Most of them were to and from his friend. A few text confirmations of credit card payments, and one from an unlisted number that just said ‘JH is in France.’ That one was from just over a month ago.”

“Nothing else?”

“Not of any importance, really. A cheap paperback he’d been reading in bed, some cigarettes and an ashtray full of butts, and a little prescription bottle of pills.”

Holmes whooped, and punched the air in triumph. “Done! Got the case solved!”

As he danced proudly in place, Lestrade and Gregson stared at him. I joined them, but it was mostly so I could admire the way he was moving. As he spoke, it was punctuated with little hops and wigglings of his hips.

“I’ve got everything in my hands,” he explained, shimmying from side to side. “I can see it all, like it’s unfolding in front of me. From the minute Drebber and Stangerson left their flat, to when Stangerson was killed. There’s still some details to fill out, but pah! I’ve got everything of importance.” Holmes doubled over to place his hands on his knees, his giggles leaving him breathless. “I can even prove it, if you can lay your hands on those pills.”

“They were still in the hotel room when I left. I can go see if they’ve been logged into evidence, yet. We didn’t think they were important.”

Holmes straightened and flapped his hands at Lestrade to shoo him on his way. “Take Gregson with you to collect them. I have a couple of messages I need to send, and I would like to celebrate. I don’t fancy having an audience for that, and judging by the shade of crimson Watson’s ears are turning right now, I doubt that he would like one, either.”

The door had barely shut before Holmes turned on me with a predatory gleam in his eye.

“Oh, Christ. You were serious?” My laugh was cut off when nearly six and a half feet of lanky detective pounced against my chest. I managed to scramble back to sit with a thump on his chair to brace myself under the impact.

“Yes, of course I was. Why wouldn’t I be?” He fumbled and tugged at my belt while sinking to his knees in front of me. “We have about twenty-five minutes until they get back.”

My hands came to rest on his hair, and I believe I babbled something about keeping to a tight schedule. I can’t be entirely certain, since at that moment, he drew me out of my jeans and began to nuzzle along the underside. Holmes curled his tongue to drag it up slowly before he closed his lips around the head of my cock.

I had to let go of his hair, rather than risk digging my nails into his scalp. The leather on the arms of his chair would forever show the marks of where I had gripped and scratched it. “Isn’t a celebration supposed to be for you?” I stammered out, and shifted in my seat.

Holmes rolled his eyes and blew out a snort through his nose, not bothering to take his mouth off of me.

“V-very compelling argument, that.” I mumbled and sank deeper into the cushions with my legs spread as wide as my jeans would allow.

He was fast and clumsy in his eagerness, without much finesse to start. Between his happy moans that sent waves of pleasure down my length, Holmes lapped and twirled his tongue around the head, looking up at me the whole time. I didn’t try to guide him, wanting him to experiment and explore how he liked.  

With most of his attention directed at the head, Holmes wrapped one of his slender hands around the shaft so he could stroke me firmly from the root to his lips.

I normally wasn’t a passive participant when it came to sex, but Holmes looked so pleased at being able to do what he liked, that I slouched back to simply watch him work. My fingers tangled back into his hair, and I had to do my best not to tug at it. Breathing slowly through my teeth to calm down, I relaxed my hold and carded gently through it. The gel that he had slicked it all back with flaked off, leaving the strands free to slip in front of his eyes.

When we had first met, his hair had been clipped military short on either side of his head, with the rest swept back off his forehead. Now, it had grown out a couple of inches on the side, just long enough that I could graze my fingernails through it to ruffle and muss it. With the gel brushed from the rest, it fell in soft, fine strands.

Holmes pulled off of me to toss his head to clear his eyes. Before he could dip back down, I cradled the back of his head, guiding him up into a deep kiss. I covered his hand with my own, helping him set a faster pace. It wasn’t that I wanted him to stop, it was just that his lips were too tempting to pass up the opportunity.

“You’re distracting me.” he mumbled against my mouth before pulling away. With one hand on the middle of my chest to keep me in place, Holmes looked down, a smug little smile beginning to form at the corners of his lips.

In the darkness of my room, we hadn’t had the chance to properly enjoy the sight of each other. Now, Holmes was running his fingertips over my length, tracing the freckles that were on the side, before flicking his tongue along the slit.

“Your hair is much more Titian here than I would have thought.” he mused, burying his nose into the nest of hair. It had always just seemed sort of dark ginger to me. “Compared to the hair on your head, I mean.”

After giving me a thorough examination, Holmes rocked back on his heels to stroke me with both hands. It took him a moment before he found a rhythm that left me digging my nails back into the upholstery. His slender fingers gripped the base, while his thumb massaged just behind my bollocks.

I’d like to believe that it was because I knew our guests would be back at the flat soon, rather than the fact that Holmes could read me so well that he already had me on a hair trigger. Whatever the truth was, it didn’t take long for me to feel the familiar tension building low in my belly. I tried to lift my leg to brace my heel on the chair, only to have Holmes pin it back down with his elbow. Staying still was impossible now, but every time I shifted or squirmed, Holmes would put me back in place.

Hiking my shirt up - something he allowed - I grazed my nails over my ribs and sides until goosebumps rose on my skin.

Time stopped meaning anything. I didn’t care anymore that at any moment, two police officers would come barreling through our door. My entire focus was on Holmes, and the pull of his lips. I opened my mouth to warn him that I was getting close, but Holmes drew off just in time.

Like a plucked string, my orgasm pulsed through me, leaving me shivering through the aftershocks. My cock swelled and Holmes laughed when a thick splash of come hit his cheek. The rest only made it as far as his shirt.

“Dammit, I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching where it was going.” I groaned, feeling my face burning with embarrassment.

“I swear, officer,” Holmes pitched his voice lower. “He just jumped out in front of me!” Before standing smoothly, Holmes nuzzled against my still hard staff until it gave a feeble nod, spreading more of the mess over his face. He looked down at the white smear over the yellow R on his chest and chuckled quietly. “It’ll wash out, Watson. It’s fine.” He stripped the shirt over his head and used it to wipe his face clean. Hands braced on the back of the chair, he leaned over me and kissed me deeply on the lips, letting me taste myself on him.

Trying to palm him through his jeans earned me a sharp rap on the knuckles. “No time,” he chided and turned on his heel. Hips swaying from side, Holmes left me to deal with my state alone.

“Machine,” I called after him, dragging my fingers down my face.

I was still a bit thick when he came back in to find me trying to tuck myself into my jeans.

“Not a machine,” he clucked, pulling a Doctor Who shirt on over his head and combing his hair back off his face. Holmes straddled my lap and rested back on my knees before pressing a soft kiss to my bottom lip. “I need to send some messages, and I don’t want to mistype.” He spun around to sling his legs over the arm of the chair and snuggled against my chest.

Holmes’ mobile chirped several times in replies before we heard steps outside the door.

“Ah, you made better time than I had expected.” Holmes slid off of me to sit cross legged in the other chair, his hands folded in his lap. “Did you get the tablets?”

Lestrade produced a small bottle from his pocket, looking incredibly guilty about them not being in an evidence bag. “I scooped them up before anyone even noticed they were there. This better be worth it, kid. I could get sacked for this.”

Holding his hand out for the bottle, Holmes gave Lestrade a comforting smile. “There’s two tablets still left in the bottle. I’ll only need half of one. You can have these back in his room, without anyone knowing they were tampered with. You’ll be fine.” He held the bottle up to the light before shaking his head and passing them over to me. “I’m not that familiar with pills. They don’t seem normal to you, do they?”

I only had to glance at them to agree. “Water soluble, obviously. And uneven. They look like those bath bombs, the kind that bubble and fizz once they hit water. Probably compressed in a sweets mold.”

Holmes beamed, and glanced up at Lestrade and Gregson. “Oh my, I’m definitely keeping him.” He silenced a yelp when I prodded him with my toe. “Watson, you hit on the point that was frustrating me, exactly.”

We followed him to the desk against the wall where Holmes got a clean slide for his microscope. He took a scalpel that I’m fairly sure had come from my first aid kit, and sliced one of the pills in half. “I don’t suppose any of you are willing to volunteer yourself to taking the pill?” he asked, adjusting the eyepiece. When his question was answered with annoyed silence, Holmes sighed and sat down. “Fine, I’ll just need a small blood sample, if my suspicions are correct.” He turned the scalpel over in his hand, prepared to slice the side of his hand.

“Jesus Christ!” I grabbed him by the wrist, and squeezed down hard to dig my thumb into his radial pressure point and my fingers around the entire joint. His fingers automatically uncurled and spread slightly, and Holmes dropped the scalpel to the carpet. “You just used that blade to cut apart a pill that could potentially kill you in minutes.” I bit out.

Holmes looked from me, to the blade on the floor before licking his lips. “Oh,” he breathed.

“Yes, _oh_ ,” I dropped his wrist, and pointed at the two officers. “Keep him from doing anything stupid.” I ordered before turning to dash up the stairs to my room, muttering about idiot geniuses.

My large supply bag was tucked under my bed, filled with basic medical equipment. I dragged it out and sat cross legged on the floor while pulling on a pair of sterile gloves.

Getting a tourniquet on with only one hand wasn’t easy, and I needed to use my chin to pull the rubber strap tight enough around my biceps.

“Goddamned bampot,” I swiped the inside of my elbow with a medicated swab and found the needle. “How in the hell did he stay alive before this?” I made quick work of slipping the point into the brachial artery, because my median cubital vein was deep, and still recovering from my time in hospital.

I clipped the vacuum tube in place, and drew two small vials of blood for Holmes to experiment with. With my teeth, I pulled the tourniquet off, and carefully removed the needle. The entire collection of equipment went into a bag to be put in Holmes’ biohazard bin down in his corner of the living room.

“With a brain like yours, you’d figure you could be smart enough to not try to cut your hand open, full stop. Never mind using a contaminated blade.” I flexed my hand and passed him over the blood samples.

He did look properly contrite, so I took sympathy on him, and rested a hand on the back of his neck as he leaned back over his microscope. Holmes had crushed his half of the pill and diluted it with a few drops of saline to make it easier to pour into the sample.

“I don’t understand this.” he scowled, straightening up and scratching his fingers through his hair. “There’s no reaction at all. We know that Drebber died within a couple of moments. We should be seeing something.” Holmes shoved back from the desk and drew his knees up to his chest in a sulk. He brought his fingers up to his lips and began to chew on his nails, rocking slightly in his chair. “It doesn’t make sense. I suspected a poisoning by ingestion of pills as soon as we saw the body. But these just look to be simple sugar pills.” Angrily, he ducked his head to hide the gesture as he wiped both of his eyes with the back of his wrist.

He looked so upset at being proven wrong, and Lestrade and Gregson were both smirking at him, not bothering to hide the fact that they were just indulging ‘the kid’ and his theories. I felt so sorry for him, that I crouched down next to the chair and rubbed his thigh. “What about the other pill?” I asked.

“What about it?” he snapped before his brows shot up. Leaping from his chair, he grabbed my cheeks and kissed me. “Brilliant man!”

I could really get used to his way of celebrating.

His fingers were trembling this time, as he cut the second pill in half and repeated the procedure with the other blood sample. “Can you take a look at this, Watson? I’m seeing something different, but I don’t know what I’m looking at here.”

I leaned over the microscope and adjusted the eyepiece for my own sight. “I…” Frowning, I shifted the slide and looked again. “I don’t know what I’m seeing, either.” I admitted after a moment. “It looks almost like Warfarin, thinning the blood. But I’ve never seen anything react this quickly, and this effectively before. It seems like it’s not just thinning the blood, but breaking it down.” Dragging my hand back through my hair, I straightened up again. “I don’t know what is happening, or how, but that is definitely what killed Drebber.”

Holmes chewed on his lip and paced in spot for a moment. “Charpentier,” he murmured after a moment. “He was boxing, when you found him, right?”

Gregson nodded, and neither he nor Lestrade saw the relevance, but I was right on Holmes’ heels. “We won’t know until the postmortem is back, but I’d lay ten to one odds, there’s evidence of internal injury. A stomach blow, for example? Or maybe Charpentier hitting him had nothing to do with it. It could even just have been an ulcer.”

Clapping his hands together, Holmes spun in place then pointed at me. “An ulcer, yes! Maybe even in his oesophagus. After all, he’s been on the run.”

“If I were on the run, the stress would be enough to eat holes in my stomach lining.”

“Especially if you drank.”

“And was taking aspirin or something for tension headaches. Or hangovers.”

“Good heaven above, Watson. You are so sexy right now.”

It was Lestrade who finally managed to break in. “An explanation will be coming at some point, right? Or should I go make some popcorn and get comfortable for the rest of the show?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, explanations.” Holmes fluttered his hands and moved to sit in his chair, crossing his legs. “I should have had more faith in myself. Lestrade, I knew as soon as you told me that there was pills involved, that that was the method of murder. I should have known that one of them would be a placebo, while the other contained the poison.” Holmes capped the bottle and tossed it to Lestrade. “You now hold in your hands, the murder weapon. At least, the one used on Drebber.”

Lestrade turned the bottle over in his hands and let out a long whistle. “This is a new one for me.”

“That much is obvious. The problem you’ve both been having, is that you seem to think that ‘strange’ is synonymous with ‘mysterious’ when in fact, it is the very thing that took so much of the mystery out of this case for me.” Holmes replied. “This whole thing would have been almost impossible for me to solve, if the killer had simply dumped the body in an alley, and done away with those words in blood.”

Even while Lestrade was listening with interest, Gregson reached the end of his patience and burst out. “All right, listen here, Sherlock.” he snapped. I moved to rest my hip on the arm of Holmes’ chair, and slid my hand over his shoulders. Protective and possessive in about equal turns, I kept Holmes close in case Gregson’s temper broke and he struck out. I didn’t know the man well enough, but he had been getting more and more annoyed as the day went on.

“I’ll be the first to admit you’re clever,”

“Last,” Holmes muttered under his breath. I leaned over and kissed the top of his head.

Gregson chose to ignore the exchange, and pushed on. “And you’ve got your own way of doing all of this. But this isn’t just an exercise for us. We need to know who killed these men. Can you give us a name, or just weird descriptions of what you think he looks like? Because I can’t exactly go tracking down every tall man with a red face. I’m getting sick and tired of all these little hints about how you know so much more than we do. Do you know who he is?”

“I’m sorry, Sherlock. But I agree with Gregson here.” I could see how hard it was for Lestrade to admit that. “You’ve said a few times now, that all of the evidence is there for us. That you have everything you need to solve the case. Don’t hold out anymore.”

I passed my hand over Holmes’ brow and down his cheek. “The longer he’s out there, the more time he’s got to plan another murder.”

Between the three of us, we managed to break through Holmes’ resolve. He began to chew on his fingernails again until I tugged his hands away from his mouth.

“There won’t be any other murders. It was just those two men. Yes, I know his name. But that’s not enough. We need to have our hands on him without him suspecting anything. That will happen very soon, though. Trust me.” Holmes stood from the chair and began to pace back and forth, hugging his arms around his chest. “He can vanish inside of five minutes, if he thinks someone is after him. I have my own people working on this. I trust them to do this more than I trust you. And if anything goes wrong, it will be entirely on me.”

The words stung, and I shifted in place on the arm of the chair, clearing my throat quietly.

“No, not you, Watson.” Holmes crossed the room and slid his hands over my jaw and into my hair. He cradled my head and rested his forearms across my shoulders to lean in. Our foreheads together, Holmes rocked us for a moment. “I trust you. I’m prepared to get in trouble for doing all of this. You have a medical career ahead of you, that I won’t let a criminal record get in the way of.”

I took up the cushion from the chair and swatted Holmes in the back with it. “You’re such a berk.” I murmured affectionately. “You could have clued me in to what you were doing.” To give him credit, I had been rather sated and sluggish while he had been sending his messages, and not paid much attention to who they were going to.

Over Holmes’ shoulder, I saw Gregson turn red with fury, flushing from under the collar of his shirt to his hair. With a warm smile, I cupped Holmes by the cheeks in return and brushed a kiss over his lips. “Don’t do that again.” I ordered with another, deeper kiss.

Perhaps I’m sadistic, but the way Gregson nearly purpled filled me with a mad sort of glee.

“Aw, that’s so cute.” Came a cracking voice just behind me. The leader of Holmes’ little group of junior detectives stood in the door, tugging on the hem of his shirt with a toothy grin. “Sorry, Mr. Holmes. The cab you wanted is downstairs.”

“Excellent!” Holmes broke away and sprinted into his bedroom. A second later I heard a crash as if he had overturned something. When he came back, he was tucking something into the back pocket of his jeans, and hauling an enormous suitcase behind him.

“Walt, be a dear and run down to tell the cabbie that I need help with my bags. Let him know there will be a tip in it for him.” Holmes began collecting books from the cupboards and dropping them into his suitcase, while I trailed behind him trying to figure just where in the hell he thought he was planning on going without me.

Holmes knelt on the floor and struggled with the suitcase. The driver came up, looking annoyed. “Oh, thank you,” Holmes affected a lisping, nervous accent as he spoke. “I can’t get this blasted thing to close. If you could just put your knee here, it should -”

Using the same maneuver I had on him earlier, Holmes grabbed him by the wrist. He twisted it up behind his back and slipped a pair of plastic zip ties onto him, effectively binding his arms together. Staggering back, Holmes wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well, I suppose this would be a good time to introduce you to the murderer of Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson,” he panted. “Jefferson Hope.”

The entire scene took place before I could even take a step in Holmes’ direction, but I remember it all so vividly. Holmes looked radiant in his moment of triumph, with a faint sheen of sweat gleaming on his upper lip and his chest heaving.

At his feet, the cabbie’s face was twisted up in a mask of rage, breathing rough and ragged through his nose. When he realised that his arms were securely bound behind his back, he let out a wordless roar and kicked one of his feet out, sweeping  Holmes’ legs out from under him. While I leapt to Holmes’ side to break his fall, the man lunged at the window, slamming into it with his shoulder.

The glass shattered and the frame cracked. It took Gregson and Lestrade working together just to drag him back into the room. Even with the ties on his wrist, he fought, shaking the men off his back to try for the window again. The blood that ran down his cheeks from the broken glass made him look monstrous.

When Holmes and I jumped to help, I took a blow to the shoulder that made my vision swim and my stomach drop. I staggered for a moment, hearing Holmes shouting in French. My eyes cleared just in time to see Holmes try to pull the man up into a headlock. This only enraged him further, and he twisted, pulling at his binds to land a blow to Holmes’ solar plexus.  

Before I could form any real sort of plan, I dropped my good shoulder and pushed between the detectives. My hands went around the driver’s throat and I yanked him forward and down, slamming my forehead into the bridge of his nose. His eyes rolled back and he crumpled to the floor in front of me.

“Tie his legs. Loop it up and attach it to his wrists.” I checked my forehead for bleeding, and took a few steps back to catch my breath. Holmes was at my side, guiding me into one of the chairs and pressing a cold can to my hairline.

“I’m _definitely_ going to go watch you play a rugby match.”


	8. The Great Alkali Plains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story begins to unfold, as to why Hope went to such trouble to kill Drebber and Stangerson, and Watson realises he just might be surrounded by a lot of idiots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Onward with Part Two of A Study in Scarlet. This is where we are going to have the biggest deviations from the original. During such a long hiatus from this fic (I wrote other things, at least!) I did a lot of research, and I knew I wasn't going to keep with the original religion that is in ACD's Scarlet. It just wouldn't work for what I have in mind.   
> I also really wanted to stay with Watson as the only narrator, rather than switching over to third person for several chapters.

When our prisoner came back around, he cracked a grin at me, looking proud at the move. “I didn’t even see you coming at me,” he laughed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with his shoulder.

He had calmed down completely, and sat almost serenely in the middle of our living room with his bound hands behind his back. Holmes brought him some ice for his face, and Hope apologised for his rough handling of him and went so far as to ask if he had hurt him. “You’re just a kid.” Hope craned his neck to look at the two official detectives. “I hope you put him to work on your force after this. You’d be lucky to have him.”

Holmes looked like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to bristle or beam at the remarks, but settled on dropping the ice pack on top of Hope’s head before leaning on my side, rubbing his sore stomach.

“If you’d untie my legs, I suppose we should head along to the station? It would be easier on the four of you if I walked, rather than trying to lug my fat ass down the stairs.”

Holmes ignored Lestrade and Gregson and their protests as he crouched down to untie Hope’s legs and helped him to stand up.

Now that I was able to get a proper look at him, upright and without any of us trying to wrestle him to the floor, I was bowled over by how large he was. It wasn’t just his height, the man was built like a bull with broad shoulders, muscular arms, and a thick neck. Even with the weight loss after my injury, I wasn’t a small man, but I felt tiny next to him.

We bundled Hope down the stairs and out onto the street. Before we could leave to take him to the station, Holmes suggested that I run back in to get my first aid kit. He gave no explanation for it, but I was quick to obey. I was a fast learner, if nothing else.

While Gregson and Lestrade squabbled like children over who got to be the one to formally arrest him, Hope made himself comfortable in the backseat of Lestrade’s car. Holmes and I climbed in on either side of him, and after a few minutes, Holmes leaned into the front to press on the horn.

It finally got their attention, then we just needed to sit through the small argument over who got to drive us to the station on Harrow.

“You do realise that you’re sitting in a locked space with a man that can kill without spilling blood, yeah?” Lestrade looked back at us after Gregson slid behind the wheel.

Holmes shrugged and patted each of his pockets to make sure he had everything he wanted with him. “He’s not going to hurt us. Are you, Mr. Hope?”

With a warm smile, Hope shook his head. “No, of course not. I’m finished. And before you bother with them, yes, I know my rights. There’s no need for formality. Let’s just get on with things.” With that, he leaned back as much as his bound arms would allow, and closed his eyes for the short drive to the station.

When we arrived, a bored booking officer took the information without looking up from the video he was watching on his mobile.

After settling into an interview room, Lestrade asked if Hope wanted a lawyer before he started to talk. The cabbie shook his head, waving away the offer. “Nah, don’t worry about it. Trust me, this case is never going to make it to trial, so no one is going to care if this is done off the books. I definitely won’t.” Both of the DIs started at that, and spoke at the same time to try to protest, leaving Hope leaning back in his chair and snickering. “Oh, settle down.” He cast a quick glance at me. “Are you a doctor?”

I stiffened and shook my head. “No, I’m-”

“He’s a medical student.” Holmes interrupted, pressing his hip to mine. “Just taking a break from his studies to help me with this case.”

“Er, yeah. What he said.” I finished with a mumble. It was reassuring to know how much faith Holmes had in me for my education and career.

Hope straightened up and tapped himself in his chest. “Take a listen,”

I pulled a chair up next to him and took my stethoscope out of my supply kit. I instructed him to sit still, and used the bell to listen to his heart rate. Frowning, I flipped the chestpiece around so I could set the diaphragm to his skin. “Shit,” There was an irregular sound to his blood flow that got more pronounced as I moved the diaphragm down so it was against his stomach, just below his ribs. I set the stethoscope aside and pressed my fingertips into his abdomen. Almost immediately, I felt a swollen, pulsating mass. “Jesus Christ, how are you even walking around?” I turned to the other men in the room with us, who were all staring at us in expectation. “He has a triple A." This was greeted with three nearly identical expressions of incomprehension. "It's an abdominal aortic aneurysm.” I explained. Still, they looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. "His aorta- the body's main pipeline?- it's swelled up like a damned balloon."

Hope practically beamed and laced his fingers together behind his head, stretching his legs out in front of himself with his ankles crossed. “Yep, I’m about ready to pop. I went to see a doc a few days before I took care of Drebber. He says it could burst at any time. Hell, if I sneeze too hard it might go.”

Behind me, Holmes made a soft, squeaking sound. “You’ve been using blood thinners.”

Winking, Hope tapped the side of his nose. “Got it in one, kiddo. I was on them for years, before this-” he tapped his belly a few inches away from the throbbing aorta. “was ever noticed. It was a bit of work, blending up the pills with some other poisons, to get things working quickly. I was originally going to just go with rat poison, but it worked too damn slow.” Hope put up his hand to stop Holmes from asking the question that was obviously forming on his lips. “Don’t ask. I went through so many different recipes, I don’t even remember what I eventually used to make the pill that exterminated Drebber. There was some warfarin in there, and some acid to cut through his stomach lining to make sure it got to work quickly.” As he spoke, he had a pleased little smile on his face. It didn’t seem malicious, just proud of what he considered a hard job well done.

I took a few more things from my bag, and looked up at Lestrade. “I’d take his statement now, if I was you. He could literally keel over at any second, here.”

While they were setting up the equipment, I took Hope’s blood pressure, which wasn’t easy considering the size of his upper arm. Throughout the interview, I kept a close eye on his chest and belly so I could watch his breathing.

“Could I get a cup of coffee? Or is that illegal in this country? Or will our doctor-to-be scowl me to death for drinking it?”

Lestrade supplied the cup of coffee and a doughnut for Hope to snack on, then they were ready to begin.

“I know you probably hear this a lot, but those men deserved what they got.” Hope moved his fingers over the table, tracing patterns and occasionally writing out the words he was saying.

“Back in the ‘80s, in the States, Child Protection was still pretty shit. Wasn’t as bad as it was before then, when kidnap victims were automatically looked at like a runaway, but if a kid was being hurt, they tried to look for excuses instead of causes.” He reached up and tugged on a lock of his hair then rubbed at the side of his neck. Many of these little tics and quirks punctuated his statement. “In ‘84, a little girl was being hurt. But this one was lucky, because she had a guardian angel over her. He scooped her up out of the home one night, and took off with her.”

“She was kidnapped, and you think he was a hero?” Lestrade made a note on his pad, his brows twitching together.

“He loved her like she was a daughter. He was like these fellows here.” Hope gestured at me and Holmes, and Lestrade looked over to us in confusion.

“Queer,” the three of us chorused together. Gregson suddenly looked very interested in the toes of his shoes.

“John Ferrier was the best man I’d ever met. He took little Lucy from her parents, and her mother and father didn’t even bat an eye.” he bit out in disgust. “If the authorities ever got around to taking Lu out of her home, John would’ve been first in line to try to be her foster father. As it was, nothing ever came of it until he took matters in hand.”

It took very little coaxing to get him to tell the story. Pausing for sips of his coffee or bites of his doughnut, Jefferson Hope told us how John Ferrier had packed his daughter into a caravan to drive her across the country to California where he had family.

“They were in Utah, when John blew the trans-” He cut himself off, looking beside me, where Holmes suddenly pursed his lips into a tight line and clasped his fingers together in his lap. Hope glanced at me, clearly confused about the reaction.

I leaned over and kissed Holmes on his temple, rubbing the back of his neck. “Transmission, Holmes.” I explained, moving my hands in the air to help. “It’s the part of the engine that makes sure it has the right strength. That’s how the engine shifts gears.”

“I know that.” Holmes muttered in the tone of someone that really had no idea, but was going to go down fighting to deny that he was ignorant about something.

With my hand over my mouth to cover a smirk, I turned back to Hope. “Utah’s all desert, innit?” I asked. “Mm, not surprised the engine was fucked. That boom can be terrifying. I was doing a night patrol last year, when some rocks got kicked up into the engine of the Rover, and suddenly everything start smoking and banging.”

Hope saluted with his cup, looking contrite at having upset Holmes, even though he didn’t understand what it was about. “Then you know how serious it is. They were stranded there until they could get the engine fixed. John was avoiding using his credit card, and there’s only so far that cash can stretch. So when the guy that towed them offered them a place to stay, John took it. His first mistake, there.”

A place to stay turned into meals, which turned into work on the caravan. Soon Ferrier had worked up a sizeable debt to a group of alarmingly friendly people. But they had children that played with Lucy, and didn’t ask questions about why father and daughter looked nothing alike, or why the girl occasionally slipped up and called him John instead of Dad.

All they asked of Ferrier in return, was for them to sit in on sermons on Sundays, and help out around a farm they owned. Their religious services were all fire and brimstone, the red-faced preacher repeatedly reminding the congregation that they were favourites of God.

It was two months later, when the caravan was repaired, that Ferrier was called to have a meeting with the leader of the little community.

“He looked John square in the eye, and told him that he knew about Lucy, and how he had gotten her. Said how easy it would be, for the police to be informed of her whereabouts. The head of the group told him that as long as he stayed with them, they would both be safe while John was paying off what he owed.”

I don’t know yet, if I want to be a parent. But I do know how I would react, if the safety of my child was threatened in such a way.

Ferrier though, was caught by legalities. If he refused the offer, the leader of the group would have certainly turned him in. Not only his freedom, but the well being of his daughter were at stake. He was left with little choice but to agree to the terms, to join the growing band of followers, and to obey the word of their leader, Brother Drebber.


	9. The Flower of Utah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope continues his statement, describing the cult that Ferrier had been sucked into, and explaining how he came into Lucy Ferrier's life.

“Old man Drebber used to be a preacher down in the bible belt. Spent a lot of his time in and around Florida before he ran into some trouble with the police. There were plenty of rumours floating around about what exactly that trouble was, but no one really spoke up about it, especially not where one of his loyal followers could be.” Hope tore apart another doughnut and dunked the pieces into his coffee before eating them. “Some folks said drugs, some said murder, others said trafficking. I wouldn’t’ve been much surprised if it was a little bit of all of them.”

Jefferson Hope was starting to get anxious, so I called a stop to his story for a few minutes while I checked his blood pressure. He leaned back and let me examine him, but it was with cat-like air of resignation. He just wanted to get his statement over and done with.

“When he moved out West,” Hope batted my stethoscope away and scooted closer to the table so he could hide his breathing from me. “He started doing sidewalk sermons. Now, when he was doing all this, you have to remember what was going on at the time. When he was first getting started, there were communes all over. And I don’t mean fluffy free-love and flowers communes. ‘Tween the drugs, and the whole damn country being split in different groups over race and war, everyone was angry at someone about something. So when some creep with a smooth voice came along, too many people stopped to listen.” He began to tap his fingers on the table, looking even more anxious. Since he wouldn’t let me stop his statement, I sent for a cup of tea.

“How did you know any of this?” Lestrade asked, pulling his chair in closer as  he leaned his elbows on the table. He seemed more fascinated with the story than with what we all knew the ending to be.

Hope gave him a crooked smile and accepted the cup of tea. “I’ll get to that all in a bit, promise.” he insisted before taking a deep swallow with an American’s lack of appreciation for the soothing effects of a good cuppa. “It didn’t take long before he stopped using a bible to preach, and just started telling his little flock what they wanted to hear. It’s amazing how quickly someone will throw their hat in with someone, as long as they tell them pretty things.

“Pooling their money together, they went and bought a ranch nestled right up against one of the mountains. More and more folks came, and they bought up the surrounding properties, until they had a village growing. Quite a few soldiers home from Vietnam settled with them, so they had the start of their own little militia.”

Sucking in a slow, deep breath through his nose, Hope let it out in a gust through his teeth. “That was the world that Lucy grew up in.” he sighed. “After staying at the little farm near town for a time, the commune members decided it was time to bring them both up to the ranch to live.

“By now, the ranch was enormous. I’ve seen towns smaller than that place. It was being run by Old man Drebber, and his second in command, Stangerson. Stangerson was one of the first converts, and a vet. He ran the militia. Both of them had a cluster of wives, and kids, the oldest being boys.” Hope curled his lip up off his teeth in a silent snarl.

“So,” Lestrade scribbled a few things in his notebook. “Were they Mormons, or something?”

Hope shook his head. “Nah, nothing like that. I mean, they may have picked up a thing or two from them, what with the multiple wives, but they weren’t any sort of _religion_. It was all just a power thing. You want to be with more than one person, that’s fine. Do what makes you happy. But what they were doing up on that ranch was nothing like happy for the women. And that’s the thing, yeah? Group marriages were all well and good when it was one man wanting to fuck a bunch of different women, but God help the lady that wanted more than one husband. Or more still, didn’t want any.” he finished in a soft breath.

“Sorry, getting a bit ahead of myself here. When they settled in, John and Lu were given a big chunk of land to have as their own. Not only was John good at working the land, he was even better at working people. He sold what he grew on his plot, and turned that profit into buying horses. Profits from selling foals and studding the stallions were used to buy cattle.”

A warm, lopsided smile spread over Hope’s lips as he looked into his paper cup. “He was the centre of quite a few rumours of his own. John refused to get married, no matter how many girls the ‘elders’ put in front of him. Even with offers of dowries, he turned them down. Used to say he had all the female company he needed with Lucy around the cottage. Half the commune thought he was in mourning for Lucy’s mother, the other half thought he was grooming her to be his wife when she was of age. No one thought that he might be gay.” he snorted. “No matter what they thought, people were starting to talk about how John wasn’t a ‘true believer’ of Drebber’s teachings. That was the bigger sin to them.” His lips pursed in annoyance for a moment before carrying on. “It was a cult, through and through. The had a chapel that everyone was expected to attend once a week. There were all sorts of rules that everyone needed to follow, and when someone disobeyed too many too often, no one ever saw them again. One day they’d be there, the next their cottage and tract of land would be open for the others to try to bid on.”

Hope finished off his tea and began folding and unfolding the paper to give himself something to do with his hands. “Lucy was kept away from the rest of the community as much as John was able. She spent most of her time on their corner of the ranch, or up on the mountain. She helped train her father’s horses, and saddle broke the wildest of them. That’s how I met her.” he murmured.

“It was in ‘95, and I had just finished my first year of college, and needed to earn some money to pay for the rest. I thought I’d try to hire on as a hand for one of the cattle drives. There she was, this vision on a mustang, moving in and out of the herd as if she was born on a horse. She was calling out orders to the drive hands, or telling us that we were handling our mounts wrong. To the tourists that were paying for the opportunity to be involved, she explained things more delicately, but didn’t allow them to mistreat their horses.”

As he spoke, he seemed to look inward at his memories, with a faint smile tugging the corners of his lips. It made me wonder how long it had been since he allowed himself to think back on that time, when so much of his focus had been on vengeance.

“It was near the end of the drive that I finally worked up the balls to talk to her. I’d always been pretty shy around girls, and I had already seen her turn down everyone that came her way. She was sweet about it, but she made it clear that she wasn’t interested. It wouldn’t have even happened, if it wasn’t for the cattle acting up. She was riding through the herd like she did every morning, to make sure we hadn’t lost any, when one of the bulls decided he didn’t like her horse. The big brute tried to stick him with one of his horns, and her horse reared up.”

Beside me, Holmes hissed a breath through his teeth. What I knew about horses was limited to what I could bet on them during a race, but even I knew how dangerous it was, being on a rearing animal. With cattle moving around, falling out of the saddle would have meant being trampled under hooves.

“I don’t know why I did it. No, that’s a lie. I did it because I wanted to impress her.” Hope laughed and tugged his ear. “I rode in and caught her bridle to help bring the horse back down. My sweet girl took one look at me, then chewed me out for putting my horse at risk when she had everything under control. ‘Poncho would have settled down.’ she told me, turning her nose up in a little sniff, then winked. And I was slain.

“We got to know each other over the next few days. We talked about our families. My father and hers were great friends before John disappeared. Now I understood why he had taken off. He even recognised me when Lucy brought me round to her cottage to introduce us. By then, we had gotten pretty close.”

Hope moved his hand to his throat as if he was going to grab a chain that he no longer wore. When his fingers didn’t find it, he sighed quietly and shook his head. “Pretty close doesn’t cut it. I hated being apart from her. Whenever she wasn’t near, I was always looking around to see where she was, and didn’t calm down until I caught sight of her. The other hands would poke fun whenever I’d start to go blank and just watch her working with the horses or teaching the tourists rope tricks. I remember I used to sit there by the fire all dopey grins and heart eyes, and would turn tongue tied when she asked me something. And whenever I’d say something stupid, she’d just smack my arm and grin, and it was damned perfect.”

Lestrade was trying to hide a grin by this point, and was doodling hearts on his notes as he jotted down the important information. Holmes caught sight of it over his shoulder and kicked the detective under the table.

“Go on, Mr. Hope,” Holmes urged, shooting a glare at Lestrade, who looked for all the world like a chastened student, not a middle-aged man being put in his place by a punk in his twenties. Gregson snorted, and earned a dark look from me.

Seemingly unaware of the silent conversation going on around him, Hope nodded. “Well, John remembered my dad and was happy to hear stories from home, so he invited me to stay with them. It was such a homey setting, I never wanted to leave. John doted on his daughter, and she clearly adored him. Either John didn’t notice, or he didn’t mind, that I was head over heels for Lucy. He still liked me all the same, and we even had a few long conversations into the night, well after Lucy had nodded off on her dad’s shoulder.”

Once more, he got that far off expression, as if he wasn’t actually with us, but was instead sitting on a ranch overlooking pastures, with a mountain beyond. His eyes were overbright at the memories that were moving just behind them. “It was during one of those talks when John and I discussed Lucy’s future. He didn’t want her living on the ranch, but knew that he was stuck there through blackmail. Lucy had a chance at a real and happy life, and when I told him that I had fallen in love with her and suspected she might feel the same, we set to planning. John had a lot of money squirreled away, and wanted to use it to send Lucy to university. There would be more than enough left over to buy a small farm somewhere quiet, away from the reaches of the commune.

“The plan was for me to go and deal with finances for school, and any paperwork needed to show that Lucy was a Ferrier. In the eyes of the government, Lucy didn’t exist. The little girl that had been ‘kidnapped’ had been declared dead ages ago. I don’t even know if Lu remembered any parent other than John.”

Hope rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his head from side to side until I heard a low pop. With his eyes closed, he tapped the fingers of his free hand on the table in front of him. “The day before I was supposed to go, Lucy came up to me and demanded to know what the two of us had been scheming away at without her. I told her the truth flat out, that I needed to leave, but that I would come back.

“‘Come back for me, right?’ she asked, in that tone of hers that said she already knew the answer. There was a bit of a glint in her eye, and she looked so smug and pleased with herself. ‘That’s what you two have been whispering about like a couple of old biddies.’ Well, there was nothing else for it, but for me to ask her properly. I barely got the words out before she launched at me, knocking me on my ass. Now I think back on it, she never _actually_ said yes. But she was sitting there on my chest already listing out the sort of animals she wanted on our farm, and the courses she wanted to take at school, and how she most definitely would _not_ be getting married in a church, so I think that counts as enough of an acceptance to my proposal.”

Swallowing thickly, Hope sniffed and tipped his head up, blinking rapidly. “I left that night, thinking everything was golden. That I’d come back in a couple of months with paperwork and school applications, and nothing bad would ever happen to us.

“I was just a kid. I didn’t know better.”


	10. The Prophet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Ferrier, refusing to give his daughter away like property, risks the wrath of the cult leader.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hover for translations.

Hope reached up and dashed a few tears from his eyes. “You’ve gotta understand what was going on in this place. This wasn’t all that long after Waco, when I met Lu. The Elders watched that happen, and decided to learn from it. The commune was becoming more and more like a fortified camp, with armed patrols.”

Lestrade sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth at the mention of the siege and shootout. As a child being kept home from school after the horrors of Dunblane, I was too young to remember the details of Waco vividly. But our Detective Inspector friend would have just been starting his career in the wake of it. Under his breath, I heard him mutter softly, “Clusterfuck,” as he jotted down a note.

“It was at that. Glad to see it made the news this side of the pond, too. I was only on John’s farm with him and Lucy for a couple weeks. Hardly had any contact with the rest of the village, and just that little bit I saw was scary as hell.” Hope nodded. “No one was allowed to leave on their own. Only groups left to go down off the mountain, and when they did it was always a scheduled trip. Usually there was one of the Elders, or one of their sons, in that group to keep an eye on things. Requests for visits needed to be submitted for approval, with all sorts of promises that they weren’t going to speak to strangers unless it was to bring in more followers, or that they would make no purchases that hadn’t already been agreed on. No one was allowed to read books, and no one had a television in their cottage. There was only one telephone, and that was in the church, which had been an old barn at one point.”

Gratefully, he accepted another cup of coffee. He rolled the paper cup between his hands then held it to his chest as if trying to gain some warmth and comfort from it. He rubbed his nose with the back of his wrist and I could hear his leg jiggling under the table. “By then, Brother Drebber was starting to completely lose it. He was calling himself the Prophet, and his little secret inner circle were his Avenging Angels. More like his attack dogs. No one knew who was in that group, and everyone whispered about them like they were ghosts.” He stabbed his finger onto the tabletop a few times for emphasis. “You couldn’t talk to your neighbour, your best friend, because they could be in that group. You make the mistake of complaining to the wrong person, and the next morning your family finds a splash of blood and you’re never seen again.

“They would go off out of the commune every couple months or so, and when they came back, suddenly someone would have a new Navajo or Ute bride, and the police would hear a report about a girl gone missing or a car run off the road.”

“Why did the police in Utah not do anything about this?” Lestrade asked with a frown. “Investigate the kidnappings?”

“Yeah, because the police gave a damn about a few missing girls off of a Rez.” Hope drawled out, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “What would your boys in blue here do, if they had a choice between helping first class or second class citizens? Are you doing much better here?” One of his eyebrows twitched up.

Lestrade drew back as if he had been struck a blow and busied himself with his pen. A DI that had been around for the formation of Trident, he was a good man, and I could see how exhausting it must be for him, working from within a broken system. Things were bad enough for him that he had gotten used to seeking help from outside official channels. It made me wonder how often he had turned to Holmes for assistance and guidance, knowing that he couldn’t trust his own PCs, or fellow Inspectors.

Holmes caught my eye, and I saw the same thoughts on his face. In that expression, I read just how drained he was from being appointed the unofficial representative voice for those that went unheard. I didn’t know how I would go about it, but I decided then and there that I would do what I could to make certain that he was able to take clients of his own choosing.

“Even if they cared, no one wanted a repeat of that siege. With cults and communes like that, everyone tread so fucking carefully, you know? A lot of the folks there were like John and Lucy. Or like those girls. They weren’t followers, they were prisoners. The place was filled with families. Kids. All it would have taken was one nervous cop that shoots at a shadow, and the place would have gone up.” He shot his hand in the air, his fingers spreading wide to mimic an explosion. “How would that have looked on the news? A whole village being taken down by the cops?”

Hope took a small sip of the coffee to steady himself. Across the table, I could see the pulse pounding in his temple. I wanted to bring the interview to a halt, but this would probably be his only chance to get his story out. His aneurysm was ready to burst, and he would never survive to make it to trial. It was as if we were witnessing his last rites.

“If Lu and I hadn’t fallen in love, John would still never have let his girl marry one of the others on the commune. It was bad enough that he refused to marry, but to keep such a pretty little thing away from marriage? No chance. He was just waiting it out until I was able to get back to help them.” Hope’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat into his fist.

“Not long after I left to set everything up, John was getting ready to head and work out in his field. Their house sits at the end of a little pathway through his field, and looking out the window you can see the whole way down the path and even a little ways down the road. So he could see one of the Elders coming up the path.”

The picture Hope painted was a terrifying one. An Elder, likely one of the inner circle, named Brian Young had come upon John Ferrier, demanding to know why he refused to embrace their faith. Ferrier had protested, defending himself by pointing out how much money he gave to the communal funds, and how often he attended the church services.

“None of that mattered. As soon as Brian asked to meet John’s wives, he knew he was ruined. Just like he always did, John tried to brush it off. Said that his daughter was enough for his happiness. Even now, I still don’t know if they knew that John was gay, or if they thought he was using Lucy as his wife. The second would be a broken rule because he didn’t ask permission. The first would be a death sentence.”

The thought made me sick, and I couldn’t imagine the fear that John Ferrier had lived in every day of his life, just wanting to protect his daughter. Never being able to speak out, let alone live his own life, he had been trapped completely through blackmail and threats. Everything he had done was to keep his daughter safe, at the expense of his own well being. A true father, something I had never known in my own life.

“Of course, it was Lucy that he was there to ask about. He wanted to know why John hadn’t given her to one of the other men.” Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, Hope swallowed thickly and his hand trembled hard enough to slosh coffee over his knuckles. He stared at it, not seeming to notice that it was still hot enough to burn, but his skin turned red. It was only after it cooled that he appeared to wake from a daze. He set the cup down and shook his hand before sucking on one of his knuckles.

“Give her. Like a fucking puppy out of a litter or something. That’s how they felt about their own daughters. Just some sort of commodity that they could trade or sell off to one of their friends if things got tough. They had no other use for their girls. Well, John insisted that Lu wasn’t old enough to get married.”

The excuse hadn’t been enough. Most of the women at that commune had been forced into marriage much younger, and Lucy’s beauty had drawn the attention of several high ranking men. Fights had broken out between them to see who would be allowed to add her to their groups of wives.

“‘The Elders have enough cows in their herds,’ That’s what he said, thinking he was comforting John.” Hope muttered bitterly. “Can you imagine? Cows, and their families were nothing but herds to them. But their sons, who were all on their way into positions of power now that their fathers and uncles were getting old, they only had two or three wives apiece. Brian told John that Lucy could choose between young Drebber, or young Stangerson. He gave her a month to make her decision before it would be made for her.”

The tension that had been boiling through Hope became too much, and he pushed his chair back from the table with a grating shriek on the floor. Both of the Inspectors took a half step forward in case they needed to restrain him, but he only paced from one side of the small room to the other. He put his hand to his stomach, massaging at the discomfort he felt there.

“Mr. Hope, here, let me give you something for the pain.” From my bag, I pulled out a small syringe and a bottle, preparing the shot. He sat down and allowed me to push his sleeve up to expose a massive biceps, where I disinfected the skin and injected him carefully.

“Quid donabis ei?” Holmes asked quietly.

It took me a moment to think of the proper words, but I pressed my knee against Holmes’, and rubbed my foot along his calf before replying, ”Tantum a sal solutio. Posse autem videri putat is mos succurro.” just as softly. I thanked my terminology textbooks for the assistance when Holmes’ brows shot up in surprise.

His soft laugh was turned into a quiet cough.  “Ego certe cognoram a genio erant.”

I ducked my head to hide the colour in my cheeks and pressed a plaster over the injection spot. I was nothing of the sort, I had simply wanted to help ease some of Hope’s worry. Just as I had hoped, our storyteller relaxed and stopped rubbing at his stomach. The fear of pain and his own memories had been the cause of the discomfort, more than the swelling. “Thanks, Doc.” he breathed and settled more comfortably into his chair.

“Right, if you’re done giving drugs to our _prisoner_ , can we continue?” Gregson sniffed and dragged his chair over to the table, apparently tired of standing off in the background.

“Yeah… yeah, sorry. Of course.” Hope shook himself and drummed his knuckles on the table. “After Brian gave them their time limit, he told John that if Lucy didn’t decide, the choice would be made for her. And that if they tried to get out of it, they would find what was left of their bodies down on the highway. He stormed outta there, and poor Lu came into the room. She had been listening to the whole thing.

“John asked her flat out if she still loved me.” Hope cracked a small grin and gave a silent laugh. “She hauled off and kneed him in the leg. Nothing had changed with how she felt about me. We hadn’t been able to keep in touch, but she still loved me just as much as the day I had left. God… My girl… Anyway, John told her that he would send word off to me, and they would wait until I showed up before they would gather what money they had. Then we would all go off together.

“They had so much faith in me. That I would come and make it all better for them. They had been stuck up on that mountain nearly all of Lucy’s life. They had gotten used to being told what to do, even if they didn’t always listen.” The guilt was etched in the lines of Hope’s face, and his eyes looked lost and ashamed. “That night, John locked all the doors and windows, and stayed awake until daylight with his shotgun over his lap while sitting up in his bedroom.”


	11. A Flight For Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After telling Lucy's suitors that she won't marry either Drebber or Stangerson, John Ferrier begins finding ominous bloody numbers painted in and around his home, counting down the days before her decision needs to be made.

Guilt was etched deep in the lines of Hope’s strong, tired face. He had been little more than a boy, younger than Holmes was now, when Ferrier and his daughter had looked to him as a sort of saviour come to secret them away. The weight of that responsibility was still plain in his expression as he sat there across from us, toying with the tattered edges of his coffee cup. 

“The day after Brian came to pay him a visit, John headed down into town to meet up with some of the other drive hands that were still hanging about before they went back home. A few of them were at school in Nevada with me, and we’d all come up together to work on the cattle run, so John gave them word to bring to me. I hadn’t gotten settled in yet, meaning that John couldn’t call me. He was stuck with sending me a letter.” Hope was speaking with a low, droning tone by now. His eyes were unfocused, staring at a spot on the table a few inches in front of his hands. I didn’t know if it was the placebo effect of the shot I had given him, or his own determination to get all of this out, but the pulse in his temple stopped throbbing hard enough that it could be seen from my side of the table. 

“When he got home, there were two men there waiting for him in the kitchen.” 

“Drebber and Stangerson,” Holmes supplied. My friend had matched Hope in his tone, subdued and a little breathy. He seemed to be absorbed, almost childlike, in the story. 

Hope gave him a quick, crooked smile and tapped the side of his bruised nose again. “Ugly sons of bitches, even then. They were there to talk about their offers, like they were making some kind of business deal with John, instead of convincing him to let his daughter marry one of them.” 

Stangerson was the younger of the pair, and had fewer wives, thinking that this would make his suit more appealing. In Drebber’s eyes, the fact that he had more wives didn’t matter, considering he was able to provide for the ones that he did, as well as any more that might come into his household. As the oldest son of the ‘Prophet’, Drebber had become a wealthy man, and everyone in the community gave in when it came to whatever he wanted. He was used to getting everything and anything he set his sights on. The pair had argued between themselves about who would be able to take Lucy as their bride, like two children squabbling over a toy, neither of them seeming to notice how enraged it was making their potential father-in-law. 

“They were lucky John had enough self control not to take a club to them both right then and there. He told them that if Lucy chose one of them to marry, he would send for them, but otherwise he didn’t want to see them at their farm again. I probably don’t need to tell you how surprised that made them both. These were two guys that were treated like the princes of the commune. The sons of the leader and his right hand man, no one said boo about them without risking the wrath of their fathers.” A flash of pride moved over Hope’s features, softening them for a moment. “John threatened to throw them out the fucking window. He was a big brute beast, compared to those pups. They turned tail and ran out the door. 

“Before they took off back to their own farms, they threatened John, telling him that their fathers would hear about how they were treated. He would have gone after them with his shotgun if Lucy hadn’t grabbed him and dragged him back inside.”

“So she was a witness to all of this?” Lestrade asked. Like Holmes, he had become drawn into the tale. It was as if Hope wasn’t his prisoner, but a friend he had made over a pint of bitter. 

“Yeah, Lu was there the whole time. Listening in from behind doors, mostly. She’d never risk confronting those men like her father would. Telling off a strange temp labourer was one thing,” he smirked and gestured to himself. “But when it came to those bastards, she kept hidden. They wouldn’t have hesitated in scooping her up for a forced wedding.” 

Lestrade swore quietly under his breath in French. Whatever he said was so shocking that Holmes sucked in a breath and almost choked. Patting his back, I hooked my foot around the leg of Holmes’ chair and tugged him closer. Not giving a damn that we were in such close quarters, I pressed a kiss to Holmes’ jaw and left my lips there for a moment. Hope watched us with a small smile until I pulled away and brushed the backs of my fingers over Holmes’ smooth cheek. 

“John told my girl that he’d be cold in his grave before he saw her married to anyone around the commune.” 

John Ferrier must have been a brave man, indeed. With people going missing from their community after the smallest slights of speaking out against their leaders, flatly refusing to obey a direct order must have been met with the harshest of death sentences. Ferrier had already been disobeying the church by refusing to take a wife, and now he was refusing to give Lucy away to one of the leaders’ sons. It was a wonder he was able to keep his fears away from his beloved daughter as much as he did. 

“The day after the lads threatened them…” Hope clenched his jaw and he scrabbled into his pocket for some tissues which he pressed to his nose. When he pulled them away, I saw that they were spotted with blood, while his face flushed deeper red. I stood up from my seat, ready to stop this, but Hope grabbed me by the wrist and shook his head. “I can hold on a bit longer.” he croaked. “I promise. I’m not going to topple over dead on you, Doc. Siddown. There’s not much left, anyway.” 

Lips pursed in a hard line, I nodded stiffly and sat down again. I kept poised and ready though, knowing that no one else in the room would bring an end to this if Hope needed it. 

Hope tipped his head forward to let the blood drain from his nose, and he clutched at the edge of the table to keep from falling. It took a few minutes, but he eventually straightened his head, folding the soiled tissues. “The next day, John woke up first thing in the morning, with ‘29 days’ scrawled over the wall in blood.” He lifted and waved his own red stained fingers. “He didn’t hear anyone come in, and when he checked around the house, all the doors were locked. Out in the barn, one of their horses had been killed and drained.” Hope sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “The morning after that, it was Lucy who saw ‘28’ painted on their kitchen table. That night, John stayed up in Lu’s bedroom with his shotgun, but the next morning the 27 was on their front door. 

“This kept going on for weeks. Every day, the number would be in a new place. The walls, the windows, over the porch, always somewhere that they would see it right away, but never know how it got there.”

A bit more blood dribbled from Hope’s nose, and he wiped at it with his hand instead of the tissues. “By the time the numbers had gone down to ten, John had moved into Lucy’s bedroom, put bolts on her windows, and never let her out of his sight. He wasn’t sleeping, and he had his gun in hand at all times. Through it all, they were waiting for me. John knew that if it came to it, he’d make good on his promise, and die before he saw Lucy married to someone that she didn’t love.”

Sniffing again, Hope discreetly wiped the fingers of his clean hand over his eyes. “It was two days to the deadline when I finally made it back. I had gotten the letter three weeks after he sent it, and it had taken me another few days to get from Washoe to the mountain. It was the middle of the night when I snuck into the commune. There were patrols everywhere, and it took me hours to get to John’s farm. 

“Now, I had no idea of everything that had been going on while I was gone, but those patrols were all near the Ferrier Farm. So I knew something bad was up. I didn’t want to risk going to the front door, so I went round back where it was still dark, and opened the window to the kitchen.” 

I ducked my head and chuckled silently. “Dangerous,” 

“Damn, it was.” Hope cracked a smile at the memory. I could see that he didn’t appear to really be with us anymore. He was back on that mountain with his family.  “I hit the floor in the kitchen and when I looked up, there was a shotgun barrel under my nose. I nearly pissed myself there on the tile before John recognised me. After that, I’d never seen a man so relieved. He was almost sobbing while picking me up from the floor and hugging me. John told me everything that had been happening since I’d left, about the threats, the numbers painted, everything. 

“He had done his level best to keep everything from Lucy, but she was smarter than the pair of us put together. We were in the middle of our scheming when she came down from her bedroom. She was already packed. We didn’t have time to really have much of a reunion, but she still slammed me in the chest. I didn’t let her go while John and I told her what the plan was.” 

“And what was the plan?” asked Holmes. He was moving his knee up and down so our calves rubbed together. “How did you get out?” 

“It wasn’t easy. The patrols all over the mountain were to make sure that John and Lucy didn’t disappear before their deadline. We split up, John going first. If he was caught, he was going to say that he was on his way to the Elders to tell them that Lucy had made her mind up about who she was going to marry. Ten minutes after he left, Lucy and I followed. If we were caught…” Hope shaped his hand like a gun, and mimed shooting it. “I would’ve been able to take two or three out, while Lucy made it to her horse and booked it down the mountain. 

“After John went out the window with all the money he had been able to scrape together, I made Lucy promise that no matter what happened to me, that she would run. I would go to death with a smile, if I knew that my girl made it out.” 

Under the table, Holmes gripped my knee, his fingernails digging into my jeans. I reached down and covered his wrist, trying to get him to relax. He released his grip, but only so he could latch onto my hand, our fingers laced together tight enough that I was afraid something might break. His rings bruised my fingers, but I didn’t try to make him let go this time. 

Unaware of what we were doing, Hope dabbed at his nose once more. “We went through the window after John. We had a meeting place set up. Instead of going down the mountain, we went up into the pass. The sun was rising before we stopped running, when we caught up with John. Together we went to the motel room I had booked for us, and we thought we were finally safe to rest.”


	12. The Avenging Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Try as they might, Hope and Ferrier aren't able to escape with Lucy. Drebber's Avenging Angels follow hard on their heels.   
> With his statement complete, Jefferson Hope is satisfied with the outcome.

“We only stopped there to regroup and rest.” Hope explained, one corner of his mouth pulling down. His voice was becoming rough and harsh, and it was unclear whether it was the memories, or the pain in his abdomen that was causing this physical discomfort. Before I could even try to ask him if he needed a break, he plunged back on. “We stayed just through the night to let John recover from the run. He wasn’t a young man anymore, and the month of being harassed had really taken it out of him. Lucy and I stayed up most of the night talking, but even she fell asleep not long before sunrise.” 

I could tell from the frown tugging on Holmes’ lips, that he was wondering how someone could sleep in their position at all. Bumping my knee up against him under the table, I rolled my good shoulder in a lopsided shrug. After my time overseas, I understood how easy it was to sleep even in the harshest conditions, knowing that those few hours of rest might be the only I would get for days. I had slept better in Afghanistan, using a mate’s foot as a pillow, than I have since I returned to London with my pain and nightmares. 

“In the morning, I had to go get the car that I had stowed away on the other side of town. It wasn’t a big place, so I didn’t expect to be gone more than an hour. I even left them a note to tell them where I would be so they wouldn’t think they’d been abandoned if they woke up while I was gone.” 

Hope looked broken. His face was ashen grey under the flush to his cheeks. His massive frame seemed almost to crumple inward and he sagged against the table to lean heavily on his forearms. 

“On my way to the car, I stopped at a store to pick up some supplies to get us through the trip. It couldn’t have taken me more than twenty minutes to get them all, and I got to my car just fifteen minutes after that. Barely half an hour.” he muttered. Hope put his hands to his cheeks and massaged at his jaw with his thumbs before rolling his head from side to side until I heard the hollow crack of his neck popping. “I got back to the motel in better time than I had planned for, but it still wasn’t fast enough.

“There was no one in the main room of the motel, where the beds were. But the beds weren’t made, and the bags we had brought were still sitting on the floor.” 

With broken words, Hope choked out the scene for us. He stumbled over the description, and shook as he spoke. 

The room was empty, and he had gone out into the main hall to call for Lucy and her father. A few other guests poked their heads out of their suites, looking frightened before they vanished again. Back in the room, Hope tore the bedding back, moved the mattresses, looking for the pair. 

“The only place left was the bathroom. It had been a dirty, tiny room with rusty water in the sink. Stank.” Hope shut it eyes. “I suppose I knew what I was going to see when I opened the door.” 

John Ferrier had been strung up from the shower rod by his belt. His throat had deep furrows scratched into it around the belt where he had struggled and fought the strangulation. Cuts had been slashed over the palms of his hands, but aside from a few splashes on the floor, the blood wasn’t beneath him. Instead, on the tile wall behind him, was his name with a large zero painted in his lifeblood. The fierce old man had fought for his daughter’s safety to the end, leaving him with bruised and scraped knuckles, and broken teeth. 

Not knowing who he could trust in the little town, Hope cut down the body and called for the police from a payphone outside of the motel before rushing out. He couldn’t see anyone following him, but he hadn’t in the first flight either, so Hope chose to take a winding route to return to the mountain to lose any tails he might have had from the commune. His note had to have been read, and he did not want to take any more risks to put Lucy in more danger. 

“It took me all day to make my way round the mountain, and I had to ditch the car in the woods to cut across country when I noticed I was being followed.” Hope was visibly struggling with his words, and looked ill. “So it was the third morning, when I got there. Everything was done up in flags and streamers like a fairground, but it was quiet. The followers were quiet. Most of the people in the village had met me when I was working the cattle drive, and they recognised me when I walked through the streets. A few of the folks that had been friendly to me before tried to stop me.” 

Hope wiped his nose with his forearm, leaving a smear of blood over his sleeve that he didn’t give notice to. With his other arm he wiped his eyes. “They told me that there was a price on my head, and that I should turn around the way I came. I didn’t give a damn who might want to hurt me, when I had Lucy waiting for me.” 

One of those few sympathetic followers had told Hope the whole story. It had been the talk of the little village. Our victims had both been involved in following them through the mountains. A fight had broken out between the friends over who would be allowed to take Lucy as their next wife. Stangerson believed that he had the rights to her, as it was his hand that had strung up her father in the motel. Drebber believed he did because he was more important in the community. In the end, it had been Drebber who had won her before things came to physical blows between them. It was because of his father that he earned the marriage. The commune elder had stepped in to make his ruling in his son’s favour so that he could inherit Ferrier’s tidy little fortune from his farm and cattle. 

“I didn’t stop to listen to more, I just pushed past him and to find the bastard’s house.” Hope tipped his head back, blinking rapidly. “One of Drebber’s wives was already there, standing outside. She was crying. When she saw me, she just sobbed and clutched at me to stop me from going inside. Everyone was trying to stop me from seeing Lu. 

“I… I never did learn how she did it.” he mumbled, his voice cracking. “The other wives wouldn’t tell me what she did, but between seeing John hung and bled out, and being forced into a farce of a marriage with Drebber… I learned later that he and Stangerson showed her a bloody shirt and told her that it was mine. My sweet Lucy thought that she was trapped with them, with her true family gone. She…” There was a hoarse rattle of breath, then Hope seemed unable to continue. It was too much for him. 

I reached across the table and rested a hand on his. “We understand,” I told him softly, looking to Holmes then the inspectors. They each nodded. 

Holmes licked his lips and leaned forward. He rested his elbows on the table and put his chin in his hands. “You took her wedding band.” 

“I couldn’t let her be buried with it. I went to her funeral a week later. Snuck in, but I didn’t need to bother creeping about. Her husband-” Hope snarled the word. “He couldn’t even be bothered to attend. He was off with his friends, spending his new inheritance. Her sister wives were there, and they all stepped aside to let me through. One opened the coffin for me. I felt like I’d been slapped in the face. Lucy was wearing this badly fitting wedding dress. I could tell it hadn’t been made for her. Probably a hand me down from one of the other wives. It was something she never would have chosen for herself when she was alive. My girl was all blue jeans and tshirts. Working clothes. She’d made a joke once that when we got married, she’d do it in her riding jeans and boots.” Hope sniffled quietly. “She would have been a beautiful bride, even like that. Flowers in her hair and a big smile on her face.

“The women had done their best to make her up, but she looked so thin and drawn in that little box. It was like she had wasted away in just those three days it had taken me to find her. I took the ring off her finger and put it in my pocket. You’d seen it. The damned thing was stamped like a fucking pet tag. I couldn’t let them make her wear it in her grave.”

I remembered the plain, rather generic and scuffed little gold band, with the initials and abbreviated date engraved into it. A final, cruel mark of ownership from her captor. I couldn’t help but wonder at those other wives and their own rings.  

“Then I left.” Hope said with chilly flatness. “I knew that Drebber and Stangerson had to be punished for what they did to my family, but I had no idea how to go about it.” 

By the time Hope had come back to himself, when his grief had dulled to a lingering, always constant ache, he returned to the village to find that it was deserted and many of the higher ranking individuals had been arrested or dead. The community elders had gotten word of the raid and ordered the followers to take up arms. Drebber and Stangerson had both left their clusters of wives and fled, leaving their fathers to try to shoot their way out. 

For almost two decades, Hope was always two steps behind the men. He would arrive in a city chasing after them, only to find they had gotten word of his appearance and vanished in their fear. They had known that they were being tailed, but Drebber still took time to indulge in his vices with Stangerson’s assistance. Out from under the watchful eye of their fathers and the Angels of the commune, they were able to do as they pleased. 

“I was in London for a few months before I made some friends that were able to help me. Got me a job as a cab driver, which was perfect for my needs. I was able to follow them around, get their routines down. And when it came time for one of them to need a cab…” Hope shrugged. He still looked like he was utterly finished, but there was a gleam in his eyes. “It was all going so perfectly, I had my plans in place, before I started getting nosebleeds. Went to the doc, to find out that I was a time bomb ready to go off.” Hope rested his hand on his abdomen. “Now I had a time limit, so I had to move quickly while I had the chance.” 

“You tailed Drebber to Camberwell, and followed him after Charpentier beat him.” Holmes filled in for him to let Hope rest. “He was almost blackout drunk, so there was no risk of him recognising you. You drove up alongside him and picked him up. You brought him to Lauriston Gardens where you knew that there was an empty flat for your uses.” 

“I showed him my knife.” Hope grinned grimly. “Told him that if he didn’t take the pill, I would run him through. He still didn’t recognise me, so I pulled out Lu’s ring. As soon as he laid eyes on it, he started shaking and pleading. I ignored him and gave him the choice again. 

“Drebber took the pill. Probably thought he would be able to fight off the poison. I stood there and watched him die. You can see that my nose bleeds freely. I had blood running down my face, so I wrote my little note on the wall and booked out of there. It wasn’t long after that I realised that I had dropped the ring. When I went back to get it, there was already a cop there.” he sighed. “All that planning, and I dropped the goddamned ring.” 

“So, Drebber took the pill when you threatened him, but Stangerson didn’t.” Holmes murmured. “You had to make good on your threat, and stabbed him.” 

“I did, and I would again. He may not have laid a hand on Lucy, but he was the one that killed John. That old man had done nothing but try to take care of his daughter, and Stangerson hung him up to bleed out like a pig in butcher shop. So I stuck him like one. 

“After finding out which hotel Stangerson was staying in, I went round there and went to his suite. He knew who I was right off. He was smarter than his friend, and had always been on guard when it came to me. I gave him the same choice I gave Drebber, but he attacked me. I would have killed him, but I didn’t want it to be in cold blood. He attacked me and I ran him through in self defence. I stabbed him and let him lay where he fell. But he was stretched out by the door, and I didn’t want to touch him. I went out through the window and climbed down the fire escape.”

“You were seen,” Lestrade told him. “There was a boy walking past, and he saw you coming down. Described you down to your shoes.” 

“I was finished.” Hope shrugged and idly rubbed at the drying blood on his sleeve. “It didn’t matter if I was caught after I dealt with Stangerson. I suppose I wasn’t being very careful anymore. I went back to my room, and started packing. You know,” he tapped his abdomen again. “I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to make it out of the city. My flight wasn’t for a few days, so I went back to driving my cab. Until this morning, when this kid comes up to me after I dropped off a fare, and sent me to Baker Street.” 

Lestrade shut his notebook and slipped his pen through the spiral spine. He scratched at the stubble on his cheeks then tossed the notebook onto the table with a drawn out sigh. We were all subdued and silent. Holmes leaned against my shoulder and caressed the inside of my wrist. I turned my hand over to hold his. 

“The only thing that I need cleared up,” Holmes said, his voice low. “Is who you sent to our flat to get the ring.” 

Hope chuckled deeply and his face shone with amusement for a second. “Ah, I’m going to have to keep that secret to myself. It’s not mine to tell. He had nothing to do with the deaths, was just doing me a favour. Did a good job of it, didn’t he?” 

Sherlock Holmes ducked his head and laughed silently. He lifted his free hand and rubbed his thumb over the scraped up palm from his misadventure. “Yes, he did at that.” 

Gregson stood and cleared his throat. “We’ll be back shortly with a typed up statement for you to sign, then we’ll take you into formal custody.” 

On a whim, I held my hand out to Hope. He appeared surprised, but took it. His handshake was strong but brief and he nodded to me before we slipped out of the room. 

“He’s not going to live to make it in front of a judge.” I told them. Taking my stethoscope off my neck I tucked it into my kit and slung the bag over my shoulder. “You’d be better off just cutting a deal and moving everything along as quickly as possible. If you’re really lucky, he’ll last long enough for you to collect all of the evidence against him and the two victims.” 

“The victims?” 

Gregson was confused but Holmes looked on me with pride. “I’d lay good money that there are unsolved assaults and kidnappings in every city those two have been. Probably more than a few murders as well. Just because they dropped their religion doesn’t mean they would change their ways. Drebber’s behaviour with Alice Charpentier on the day of his death is proof enough of that. Christ, if her brother hadn’t inter-” I was cut off by a low thud from inside the interrogation room. 

Holmes reached the door ahead of the rest of us and yanked it open. Hope was on the floor with his chair tossed back against the wall. His face was slack and his head turned to the side. His chest was heaving but even as I crossed the room, I saw it slow. 

Dropping my bag to the floor as I trotted, I took my mobile out of my pocket and tossed it to Holmes. “Put on-”

“I’m on it,” he was already unlocking the phone and bringing up my music files. 

As I dropped to my knees, skidding to a stop beside Hope, the room filled with rhythmic, regimental sound of a snare drum. Hope had no pulse and when I pushed up his shirt, his stomach had a dark red line across his abdomen. “He slammed himself into the edge of the table.” I hissed while tipping his chin back. He wasn’t breathing. “The aneurysm ruptured.” 

“Is there anything you can do?” Lestrade asked from somewhere behind me, but I didn’t bother to turn around. 

“I’m doing it!” I snapped and found the centre of his sternum. One hand placed over the other with my fingers laced I positioned myself directly above him and began to compress. The music counted out the beat for me, so I could put all of my attention to my actions. Thirty compressions and two breaths, repeatedly. 

“You’re going to make it worse!” 

It looked like a violent assault, I knew. Broken ribs were common, but those would heal on their own and were a small price to pay for restarting a heart. “I know what I’m doing!” Blood was roaring through my ears, and I had to wipe the sweat off my forehead on my arm before giving Hope the next breaths.

The song shifted, the drumline still running through it, but the singers were soft and melodic now, a mournful prayer. With my jaw clenched hard I hummed along and rose up off my heels so I could put more force behind my arms. 

The song had gotten through its third repeat, almost twelve minutes of CPR when Holmes put a hand on my shoulder. “Watson, it’s over. He’s gone.” 

I shook him off and carried on. I was trained not to stop. Even while guns were going off next to my ear or with soldiers running around me, I could keep it up until one of the field surgeons arrived. In a comfortable room with a roof overhead I could carry on as long as I was needed.

“Paramedics are on their way, right?” I panted, hoarse and rough. “I can last until they get here.” Lightheaded and dizzy, I was getting breathless and hoped I wasn’t lying about being able to keep going. Holmes tried to pull me off once more then knelt beside me with my mobile on the floor. He counted along and held Hope’s head steady. When I stopped the next round of compressions, it was Holmes who tried to breathe life back into him. 

It was twenty minutes before the paramedics arrived, and as soon as the door opened, I felt Hope’s rib crack under my hand. The shift in support made my elbow buckle and I just barely managed to catch myself before collapsing onto his chest. I could see the disapproval in the eyes of the lead paramedic when she looked at me, could feel her judging my technique. 

Holmes wrapped his arms around my waist and drew me back out of the way. Breathing hard, I reached back to cradle the side of his head, my hand shaking as we watched the paramedics take out their equipment and start to work.

Hope was completely limp through it all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Watson is playing is Hands Held High by Linkin Park. It is one of many songs that can be used for performing CPR, but that one touched me as being one he would have a connection with.


	13. In Conclusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tidying up loose ends

The case appeared in the press a few days later. 

I had been in a dark mood, sleeping poorly and jumping at shadows. Holmes brought the paper over to me and settled onto the sofa. He drew his knees up and snuggled into the curve of my arm after pointedly lifting it to drape over his shoulder. It reminded me so much of a fussy cat looking for attention that I couldn’t help a small chuckle at the actions, and I pressed a kiss to the top of his head. 

My mood had done nothing to spoil the feelings developing between us in the past week, and these little moments of affection and tenderness were becoming more and more common while we continued to learn about one another. 

Holmes hadn’t yet moved his belongings upstairs, but it seemed just a matter of time. He had slept in my bed every night, and his toothbrush now resided on my sink. I’ve been known for falling into these sort of things head first and without thinking about the consequences, but this felt different. Holmes was special, not simply because of his brilliant mind and his abilities. There was something intangible that drew me to him so strongly. 

Cradling the side of Holmes’ head with my fingertips over his pulse, I spread the paper out to read it. The article was tucked near the corner on page seven under a write up about a tube station attendant that had been caught sleeping on duty. I read it aloud for Holmes, trying to keep from snorting at the description of Lestrade and Gregson and their skills on the case. 

“The two veteran detective inspectors were also seen to have been giving advice and pointers to one Sherlock Holmes, who has been known to many police constables and inspectors to have made criminal investigation a hobby. With DIs Lestrade and Gregson as his tutors, we expect to see this aspiring young private eye peeking around crime scene tape often in the future. Unidentified, however, was the ginger man seen several times with Mr. Holmes.” 

I rolled my eyes and tossed the paper aside, with a quiet snarl. “My hair is auburn, not ginger.” 

Holmes only laughed quietly. “I told you that’s how it would go.” 

“It’s ridiculous! You did all the work for them. They were just here to bring him into the station.” I bit out in disgust. “They wouldn’t have ever caught him, and Hope would have died quietly with their deaths never solved. It was too complex for them.” 

Grinning, Holmes cuddled closer. “But don’t you understand? It’s that complexity that made the case so simple. It gave me all the information I needed, as soon as I stepped into that room with Drebber’s body. The crime scene had it all laid out for them, but they were too focused on the interesting aspects of the case. They  _wanted_ it to be mysterious.” he told me. Picking up the paper from the floor, Holmes tore the article out with care and set the rest aside. 

Smiling down at him when he sprawled himself across my lap, I trailed my fingers through the lengthening hair at the side of his head. It couldn’t have been a comfortable position for him, but just the evening before I had found him sleeping upright with his eye pressed to his microscope. It seemed that he could rest anywhere if he was content enough and felt safe. 

“You can’t seriously expect me to believe that all of this was simple for you.” 

Holmes wriggled happily and I had to bite back a quiet moan. He noticed my reaction and stilled for the most part. “There’s no other word for it. As soon as we got the Lauriston Gardens, I was able to see that Drebber was brought there by a cab. So, right there we had a limit of how many suspects we could find. I told you already how I figured out how tall the driver was.” 

“By the length of his stride, yes. So, we were looking for a  _ tall  _ cab driver. That’s still not a small number, Holmes.” I could tell already that I was going to come to love arguing with him. His cheeks flushed up pink just as they had when we first met, and his eyes became hooded and dreamy. I slipped my fingers under the hem of his shirt to stroke and caress at his stomach while we settled in for a nice argument.

Holmes seemed just as content to punctuate his explanation with long kisses and soft breathy little sounds. “Not in the least, no.” He sat upright and moved to straddle my lap. “But after we had the victim’s name, it wasn’t much work to look him up. You were right in what you said at the station. Drebber was a suspect in dozens of assaults and several murders. The first of which was John Ferrier.” Holmes slid his fingers into my hair and began kissing along my throat then up around my ears. It was making it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what he was saying. “From there, it was just a matter of cross indexing anyone involved in those open cases. I could immediately rule out anyone that was dead, and that hadn’t moved. All it took was some phone calls. Then I needed to find the people that had moved. Only three of them were in Great Britain.” 

My hands were already on his arse, kneading it with my fingertips. “What if he had hired someone?” I asked, giving him a tight squeeze. He really didn’t have much muscle there to speak of, but it was still a lovely double handful to work over. “Like he did with the actor that came here.” 

He pulled his head back and stared at me silently for a moment, his expression speaking volumes with just the set of his lips. 

“Ah, right. Yes. The ring,” I nodded. “He wouldn’t have trusted a hired agent with showing the ring to Drebber. So it had to be someone that had moved to London.”

“More importantly,” Holmes was rolling his hips in my lap, and it was obvious that we weren’t going to be getting much of anything done if it involved leaving the flat for the rest of the day. “It had to be someone that moved to London, that knew Drebber and Lucy Ferrier back in the mid-nineties. Since John Ferrier had been killed, that only left Jeff Hope.” 

I gripped him a bit more firmly to make it easier to lift and roll him to his back. Holmes had learned by now that if he braced his hands against my chest, we could support my weight together to hold me above him without my arm buckling. After we had returned from the station, they had both been so weak that I couldn’t even lift them over my head to undress. Holmes had taken off my clothes and sat me down on the bed to hold me. He had been shaking as he did, and I knew that Holmes had never seen someone die before. 

Shaking my head to clear away the morbid thoughts, I turned my attention back to Holmes. His cheeks were rosy and his brilliant eyes glittered, ticking from side to side as he licked his lips. I still felt like he was absorbing every detail of my features, but it no longer felt like I might come up short under his scrutiny. 

“You got all of that while I was having a nap?” I dipped my head down to give him a quick, deep kiss before he could reply. Holmes’ lips, slightly parted and damp, were too tempting an invitation to pass up. 

“Mmn,” It took him a moment to recover. Holmes cleared his throat softly and lifted his knees to rest his feet on my hips. “Yes, well, you were sleeping rather deeply.” he pointed out. “Most of it was just sorting through old news reports for names.” He took one of his hands off my chest to wave it in a dismissal. 

I still couldn’t figure out if he was trying to downplay his abilities to seem less proud and arrogant, or if he truly believed that what he had done was nothing special. Or if he thought that  _he_ was nothing special. “It’s still terrible that you did all of the work, and Lestrade and Gregson got the credit.” I mused. “I might be a piss poor writer, but I can try to put this all down. You deserve to have the credit for everything you’ve done.” I kissed along Holmes’ throat to the curve of his jaw. 

“It was a criminal case, not some lurid fairy tale.” Holmes muttered, but still lifted his hips to meet mine in a slow, languid roll that left me groaning against the side of his neck. 

I didn’t let his diversionary tactic work to distract me. “It had plenty of the elements of a good story.” I insisted. “Revenge, sacrifice, mystery.” Pushing myself up on my straightened arms, I let the back of the sofa take much of my weight, and cupped Holmes’ cheek. “Even a bit of romance, if you aren’t opposed to that being known.” 

Holmes huffed out a quick breath and rolled his eyes. “Why would I mind if these theoretical readers of yours know that Mr. Hope did all of this for his gir- Oh. You mean us.” His cheek warmed under my hand as he blushed a deep red. “Oh.” 

Grinning, I leaned down again to rest our foreheads together. “Holmes, you amaze me.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I've finished this. It was such a long process. (Probably didn't help that I took a six month hiatus in the middle there...)   
> Worlds of thanks to my amazing beta readers, who were usually there every step of the way. They sat with me while I grumbled and whined and asked endless questions. They encouraged me and read along as I wrote, giving me immediate help when I needed it. So, Bel, Christy, Shelly, Merinda, and RJ, this one's for you. This one's *because* of you. I couldn't have done any of this without you all. I know I wouldn't have stuck it out without my wonderful cheering section.   
> And thank you to all my readers that stuck it out through this WIP. 
> 
> I have adaptations in mind for several of the other cases. First one up, is Scandal in Bohemia. Which I will literally be starting to write about fifteen minutes after I post this...


End file.
